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1: Good comments on the Alpha School review:
Michael Pershan challenges the “Bloom’s Two Sigma” claim.
Alpha School experiences from Redditors, mostly negative (1, 2, beware stereotypical Redditors who hate everything they can associate with “tech bros” but there’s some signal to be found in the noise).
Alpha School experiences from ACX commenters, mostly positive (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Some good comments from Pamela Hobart and Matt Bateman, who work at Alpha School, CTRL+F their names for more.
Lots of people agree that it’s easy for any home school and many private/charter schools to teach the whole curriculum in two hours. Shouldn’t this be a bigger deal? Also, how come nobody has tried creating a school that actually only takes each kid for two hours a day and costs one-quarter as much?
Is it selection bias? An employee says they admit everyone (…who can pay the $40K tuition!) But an Alpha parent claims that “85% of the low SES students from the Brownsville Campus that started at the school in 2022 are no longer there and its not due to lack of motivation or ability” (more details deeper in the thread, but I still don’t feel like I get a good explanation what happened to them). I think the strongest argument is that they seem to do better than other elite private schools, so even assuming an equal level of selection bias they still look good.
Phil H: “From where I'm standing, it's very much like Americans are kind of reinventing China but with less tears.” (see also MKBA)
2: A reader is looking to speak with people who have FDA regulatory experience (regulatory affairs, quality assurance, etc.) for a project. They are building a tool to help life science labs generate compliant documentation for submissions like INDs or 510(k)s, and want to get feedback from experts on the real-world pain points of regulatory work. If you have this background and are open to a brief chat, please contact at ankit@clioapp.ai
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