James Cantonwine

Hot take: eliminate AP classes and credits entirely. Instead, teens that want college credit should have free access to dual enrollment programs under their state university system to earn college credit via college classes. AP test incentives are misaligned in the worst way: "Students and families are happier because they get college credit. . . . Schools are happier because they look good. Governors and state agencies are happier because they get to brag about it.” Dual enrollment does not resolve every incentive problem, but it at least eliminates one layer of abstraction. It also can help reduce the cost of college by shifting some general requirements into the academic stagnation that is high school. This could be the simplest way to pivot American high schools toward tracking, too, so long as students not looking at college are also able to access courses that lead toward interests and industry certification. To anyone who defends AP classes are the last leg of meritocracy in schools, I'd argue it's more meritocratic to not gate keep the real thing just because someone is slightly younger than a college freshman. The ceiling can be much higher. It is possible, as the College Board suggests, that "AP standards for qualifying scores remain more stringent than grading standards in many college classrooms." Sure; but that's an issue for the state colleges to resolve. College students regularly transfer in with community college credits for these introductory courses, so the colleges have already determined that AP tests are unnecessary. AP tests are the signature of a decades-long evolution of high schools choosing college prep over life prep, so it's not a unqualified scapegoat to begin moving in another direction. I welcome any steel man against this idea.

I am not sure "Forward Deployed AI Engineers" are going to deliver on what a lot of companies are hoping for. They are useful, yes, but AI applications are far less of a technical issue, and much more about rethinking the deep expertise & structure of your organization around AI.

something cool about the academics team here is that even though they're "not technical" they use claude code religiously that means instead of: 1) me wasting time building dashboards 2) them wasting time looking at dashboards i can just give them an mcp!