
AltSchool, an Experiment in Education, Raises $100M - ghosh
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/altschool/
======
AndrewKemendo
Almost every education article posted to HN that boasts a "new approach" is
invariably a school that re-purposing Montessori. In this case it's using
technology and data to a higher degree to streamline the BS teachers have to
deal with so they can get on with teaching. That's cool and definitely a step
above 99% of schools out there, but not a revolution in the Montessori sense.

I wish more people would grok the basic principles of Montessori and just
focus on doing those right - because when it's done well its perfect and
really doesn't take much structure. My wife runs a Montessori school from our
home and has been a teacher for almost 12 years now. She has found that the
more hands on she is (and other teachers are) with the students, the worse the
outcomes are. As practitioners we see a lot of junk that claims to be
"Montessori" but doesn't really stick to the principles. These are primarily:
self directed learning and building a community for exploration and
creativity.

The best Montessori schools have agreements with local warehouses/mills/shops
etc... where children can do internships and apprenticeships. Having
"curricula" like the article states is generally antithetical to that and
kills a large portion of what makes Montessori so successful - which is pupils
taking prepared "vocational" paths which are liberal in educational scope.
It's simpler in the long run but takes much more up-front work and I think the
technology is there to make that up-front work much easier.

The real challenge is fitting these types of schools into the larger
"schooling" world of standardized tests etc... One thing we found was that
many students leave Montessori because the clearest path into college is
through the testing system and Monetssori doesn't play well with that. That is
what needs real reform.

~~~
hullo
If this were still May Day I would think that sending our seven year olds off
to the mill would be a more obvious troll, but as things stand I'm not so
sure.

~~~
brlewis
The Montessori school my oldest went to did week-long apprenticeshps in 7th
and 8th grade. I'd be surprised if any school had 2nd grade apprenticeships.

------
Aloisius
I'm all for doing whatever we can to improve education, but it is extremely
difficult to compare the quality of a education between public and private
schools because of selection bias.

Private schools tend to pick and choose the best kids and have significantly
higher suspension and expulsion rates eliminating the "problem" children.
Public schools on the other hand, have to accept everyone from the hyperactive
to those with learning disabilities.

When we try to control for these effects, often there is little to no
difference between these custom approaches and standard ones. Montessori for
instance does customization and outcomes are effectively the same as public
schools.

I suppose though even if the end result is a cheaper and highly replicable
education system, it could become quite successful as a company.

~~~
brlewis
Please cite a source for "Montessori...outcomes are effectively the same as
public schools".

Here's a study that found the opposite:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students-
prosper-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/students-prosper-with-
mon/)

~~~
Retric
At the study level sure, you can support any argument, a meta analysis like:
[http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp114197.pdf](http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp114197.pdf)
Generally shows little to no benefit and often points out flaws in individual
studies.

 _Indeed, in our data, previous authors’ specifications rarely explain a
substantial portion of the selection into the relevant privateschool sector,
raising the possibility that the weak-instrument critique may hold for this
literature. This point is corroborated in work by Ludwig (1997), who also
finds compelling evidence that prior authors’ instruments are weak._

~~~
brlewis
I expanded my quote "outcomes are effectively the same as public schools" to
include more context: "Montessori...outcomes are effectively the same as
public schools"

The meta analysis you cite makes no mention of Montessori. It's talking
exclusively of public vs. private. There are public Montessori schools, and
(obviously) non-Montessori private schools.

------
diminoten
If a 5th grader "decides" to learn some algebra, those are the cards the
teacher will start preparing for that student, right? But to "learn" algebra,
one traditionally learns a set of concepts and practices those concepts in the
form of large quantities of practice problems.

Every math teacher I've ever met has said the key to mastery of math concepts
is practice and repetition.

So, if we go back to our 5th grader, and algebra comes up for him/her in the
customized lesson plan, does that mean for the next year, algebra cards are
going to appear, with a set of problems to solve, and links to... what,
wikipedia pages that explain how to solve them?

What happens when the kid decides he/she doesn't want to "explore" math
anymore? Does that kid just not get a math education, at that time? Are we
going to have 16 yr olds who never figured out that "exploring math" is going
to be a key to being a competent adult?

I'm sure what I wrote is quite commonly brought up and an answer exists, but I
do wonder what that answer is -- to sum: what do you do when a kid doesn't
want to "explore" an area of knowledge that we as adults know is going to be
critical to functioning as one of us in the world?

~~~
Marcus316
Not sure where you got the idea that it is entirely the child's choice what he
learns. What I got out of the article is that the child's interests, strengths
and weaknesses are taken into account to produce an individualized curriculum.
If a child is weak in mathematics, the curriculum is adjusted for _that child_
to emphasize mathematics. It's not as simple as "Johnny wants to learn poetry
and only poetry, so that's what we let him learn."

At least, that's what I got out of the explanation. It's chaotic in that every
student needs to be guided differently, and AltSchool is using technology to
make that guidance easier for the teachers to apply across individuals. The
idea is not to lose students in the crowd, but also not to let them lose
themselves in the chaos.

------
anonbanker
This school looks like a terrifying extension of Snow Crash's "living-in-a-
storage-container" lifestyle, combined with training on how to be a perfect
worker drone for the new tech/service-based economy (they're even teaching the
kids to clock in and out!).

If this is where private/public school is headed, I'll stick to
homeschooling/unschooling my kids, thanks.

~~~
ryoshu
Seemed a bit more Diamond Age to me.

------
danans
There are several distinct problems in the public education system.

There is the problem where motivated and largely well-off parents find that
the public education system doesn't suit the unique interests and learning
styles of their children. This sort of school seems like a wonderful
experiment to address this sort of problem.

A second, largely unrelated problem is the under-funding (in CA for sure,
perhaps elsewhere) of public schools, given the expectation that these school
systems rectify the serious motivational and educational disabilities students
develop in communities with high concentrations of poverty and violence.

I'd argue that the latter problem is the one that has serious societal
consequences if we don't get it fixed, sooner than later.

~~~
Domenic_S
> _A second, largely unrelated problem is the under-funding (in CA for sure,
> perhaps elsewhere) of public schools_

I hear this often. I'm curious, do you have a dollar figure in mind that would
be appropriate?

~~~
aaroninsf
CA spends less than half as much per student as New York:

[http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/29/how-
st...](http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/29/how-states-are-
spending-money-in-education)

What the 'right' value is subject to debate, but as a parent in SF having
negotiated the tragicomic SFUSD system for my own children, I'd wager it's a
lot closer to New York's 19K per student than CA's $9K.

This is pure speculation, but my subjective experience is that CA funds
schools at close to the minimum possible level, and that there is a lot of
headroom in which every dollar extra spend causes an immediate improvement in
service and richness of experience.

I say this because one of the differentiating factors of the most-desired
schools in the SFUSD is the large amount of extra money parents bring in via
fundraising.

Yet even the most successful schools, which raise on the order of half a
million dollars, are only adding something like ~$1K per student.

Yet what they offer above and beyond comparable schools without that funding
bump is very evident: all the 'enriching' staples my own generation took for
granted as par of public education: art classes, PE, green space, staff with
expertise in supporting kids with differing needs (at both ends of the
performance/ability spectrum)... etc etc etc.

I have also observed that affluent parents who privilege education also both
prioritize and have the luxury of donating their _time_ \-- no small thing in
a city in which a single-income household is mostly unthinkable.

So that extra $1K may be multiplied by donated time, as well.

But any way you slice it, a few extra K per student, judiciously spent, would
make a hell of a difference in my parts.

That said, a dollar raised and allocated by the parents, in accord with
parents' priorities, and subject to their audit, is probably much better spent
than one squeezed through the SFUSD.

QED non-profit charters (of which there are several) are currently a very
strong bet in SFUSD...

~~~
saryant
I was in a CA high school as it fell apart (Benicia High in the North Bay).
The district was in the hole to the tune of millions and cutting everything
they could. Multiple teacher walk-outs a year, terrible morale. An
administration more concerned with protecting their own asses than doing
anything about education.

The school had two copiers on the entire campus: one for the teachers that was
always broken, another for the administration that was magically in great
repair. I had a french teacher who finally flipped and stormed the admin copy
room, refusing to leave until he'd made the copies he needed to teach his
class. They put him on leave pending a psychiatric review.

Buildings falling apart, bus service discontinued. Violence and an attempted
shooting that was only thwarted through sheer dumb luck.

I was fortunate that my family moved to Texas between my sophomore and junior
years so I was spared the worst of it. Just after I left, the school ended all
advanced classes and extracurriculars. AP classes gone. The band only survived
due to a strong booster organization.

A complete disaster in what was once the heart of America's dream. I was
practically in shock when I started at my new school in Texas where the
district seemed to have unlimited funds: I was in the first graduating class
of the most expensive school ever built ($77 million).

I told a teacher there that copier story and he couldn't believe it.

------
pbreit
Is there any evidence that private schools make much of a difference in the
overall education landscape or is it just yet another option for rich people?

If you really want to make a difference you need to address the broader
audience and do something like charter schools.

------
hmate9
Glad to see technology used to enhance education. I like their approach and
hope they succeed (with Peter Thiel on their side, it should almost be a
guarantee).

------
glup
A surveillance-state Montessori with a big data fetish and a bottom line
doesn’t count as reform, sorry AltSchool. I was particularly struck by:

> “It’s not hard to model language acquisition if you can listen to every word
> a person is saying,”

This is patently false big data hubris, which I’m afraid bodes poorly for the
rest of the rest of their approach. I study early language acquisition and
have worked on some very large datasets (e.g. Speechome,
[http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word](http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word)),
and there’s a lot you don’t know about the language system of a child even
with a complete record of utterances and videos of everything that happens.
Higher density/quality data is fantastic, but to understand language
acquisition or to understand the progress of a single child you have to work
out a complex system of latent variables. Education is similar— the biggest
thing is that there is s different mixture of explicit pedagogy vs.
observation.

I’m all for school reform that leverages technology but this misunderstanding
of data, in conjunction with the for-profit aspect, leaves me pretty convinced
that this isn’t the right direction.

The other thing that caught me off guard was:

> “and wearable devices that help keep track of students off campus”

I did a double-take. Why does this school track the kids off campus?

The complete lack of criticism eliminated the last shred of credibility Wired
had in my mind. I don’t care if you think this is a good idea or not, tell me
who doesn’t think it’s a good idea and why.

~~~
pbreit
> Why does this school track the kids off campus?

So they don't get lost on field trips?

------
coldcode
Everything can't be improved by adding Silicon Valley to it.

~~~
michaeledwards
But everything CAN be improved by only adding silicon to it!

~~~
crpatino
Or silicone...

