Austin X. Volz
304 posts
@axvolz
Enabling independent learners to establish their domain expertise. No schools or admissions offices required. https://t.co/maLnhWB2Hn
Most/all? High performing schools are “great schools” because of selection and admission criteria.
See also: reasons reading gains beget math performance gains.
But flip it around and the study is a cheat code. If knowledge is the scaffolding, don't fight it -- use it. Give a kid passages anchored in what they already know and love, then step outward from there, one degree at a time. The kid who "can't read" might just have never been given their baseball :)
New @ThePeelPod with @chudson Charles started @PrecursorVC in 2015 to help create pre-seed as a category. We talk about how pre-seed investing has never been harder, why sitting out of bubbles can be more dangerous than joining, how Principals at Precursor get real money to make their own bets, + urgency and “the last $250k effect”. Full episode here + links below 0:00 Is Pre-Seed dead? 4:15 Do round names matter anymore? 12:27 Multi-stage signaling risk doesn’t exist 16:42 Smart LP’s love multi-stage funds 22:03 Is the traditional Seed model broken? 26:31 Velocity of capital deployment drives all incentives 30:30 How to compete with megafunds at early stage 34:24 Megafunds have Seed funds in a vice-grip 38:34 “The best Series A’s are all expensive" 39:33 Are we doing 2021 all over again? 41:53 It’s safer to participate in bubbles than sit out 47:35 Price you pay is everything 50:22 The system incentivizes an addiction to consensus 55:22 High valuation + high CapEx grows AUM 59:56 How Precursor actually invests today 1:01:32 Precursor’s Principal investor program 1:05:56 Deciding when to selling your winners 1:10:53 Raising as a pre-consensus founder 1:12:39 What Charles looks for in founders 1:17:20 What it’s actually like to start a fund 1:20:56 Misconceptions of first-time fund managers 1:26:22 300+ LP meetings to raise Precursor Fund 1 1:29:24 The single change to the pitch that raised his fund 1:31:54 Precursor’s evolution over time 1:34:57 The second desert of venture capital 1:37:34 The last $250k effect
I agree. For example, we often discuss how, if a child loves to read and reads all the time without being asked, there is almost nothing we can do to screw it up. And if they don't, there is almost nothing we can do to catch them up . So the question then is, how do we inculcate a love of reading such that they become the first child? Successfully doing that is worth more than all the reading strategies and multiple choice tests in the world.
Thank god someone has pointed out the latest "reading is dead" panic is nonsense: dailywire.com/news/the-age-o…
I'm excited to announce the most ambitious recreation of Bloom's 2Sigma study of the last 40 years. It's funded by @reedhastings and staffed by a team of 20 of the best educators in this country. Our education team's goal is to show the largest academic gains in one year ever recorded, and we'll publish our results even if we fail. Recently, @jwdanner introduced me to @reedhastings. Most people know Reed co-founded Netflix. Fewer know he has been one of the driving forces behind improving education for the last twenty years. When Reed pitched me on recreating Bloom's famous 2-sigma problem, I felt an overwhelming sense of hope for education. Over the last few months we have moved at breakneck speed to assemble an exceptional team. Someone recently described it to me as the "Avengers of education." We are testing one question with the rigor it deserves: can elite one-on-one tutoring reproduce the largest learning gains ever measured in a controlled study? We will work with researchers from Stanford, Brown, Cornell, and other leading institutions, and we intend to be the most transparent research group in the field. That means publishing our methods, our benchmarks, and our results, whatever they show. We will invest up to $100,000 per year per student to give them the best education on the planet. If it works, the data and methods can help educators and technologists recreate these outcomes for every child. We are actively hiring tutors, engineers, and operations people to help us climb this mountain.
I'm excited to announce the most ambitious recreation of Bloom's 2Sigma study of the last 40 years. It's funded by @reedhastings and staffed by a team of 20 of the best educators in this country. Our education team's goal is to show the largest academic gains in one year ever recorded, and we'll publish our results even if we fail. Recently, @jwdanner introduced me to @reedhastings. Most people know Reed co-founded Netflix. Fewer know he has been one of the driving forces behind improving education for the last twenty years. When Reed pitched me on recreating Bloom's famous 2-sigma problem, I felt an overwhelming sense of hope for education. Over the last few months we have moved at breakneck speed to assemble an exceptional team. Someone recently described it to me as the "Avengers of education." We are testing one question with the rigor it deserves: can elite one-on-one tutoring reproduce the largest learning gains ever measured in a controlled study? We will work with researchers from Stanford, Brown, Cornell, and other leading institutions, and we intend to be the most transparent research group in the field. That means publishing our methods, our benchmarks, and our results, whatever they show. We will invest up to $100,000 per year per student to give them the best education on the planet. If it works, the data and methods can help educators and technologists recreate these outcomes for every child. We are actively hiring tutors, engineers, and operations people to help us climb this mountain.
2. Teach Tales Our reading philosophy at Alpha is simple: kids learn to love reading by reading what they love. Sure, it’s important for kids to be exposed to classic literature. But being forced to read highbrow literature as a young teen is often the very thing that makes kids hate reading in the first place. Many of them never bother picking up a novel again. So, we built Teach Tales to solve this problem. Teach Tales is an AI-powered story-building platform that turns your kid into the author of their own custom adventures. teachtales.com
I'm excited to announce the most ambitious recreation of Bloom's 2Sigma study of the last 40 years. It's funded by @reedhastings and staffed by a team of 20 of the best educators in this country. Our education team's goal is to show the largest academic gains in one year ever recorded, and we'll publish our results even if we fail. Recently, @jwdanner introduced me to @reedhastings. Most people know Reed co-founded Netflix. Fewer know he has been one of the driving forces behind improving education for the last twenty years. When Reed pitched me on recreating Bloom's famous 2-sigma problem, I felt an overwhelming sense of hope for education. Over the last few months we have moved at breakneck speed to assemble an exceptional team. Someone recently described it to me as the "Avengers of education." We are testing one question with the rigor it deserves: can elite one-on-one tutoring reproduce the largest learning gains ever measured in a controlled study? We will work with researchers from Stanford, Brown, Cornell, and other leading institutions, and we intend to be the most transparent research group in the field. That means publishing our methods, our benchmarks, and our results, whatever they show. We will invest up to $100,000 per year per student to give them the best education on the planet. If it works, the data and methods can help educators and technologists recreate these outcomes for every child. We are actively hiring tutors, engineers, and operations people to help us climb this mountain.
How AI will change media: “The value of polish is going to go down and the value of personal charisma, style, and weirdness is going to go up,” says @jasminewsun
