Addendum: Obviously bad actors can take advantage of this effect, but that's not the point. (8/7)

And you can't predict how large this effect will be from the pilot, or from the info available to the board when they are making the adoption-or-not decision, because the effect is downstream from adoption.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. (7/7)

So, the results in classrooms will never match what happened in the pilot. This is structural, there are no bad actors anywhere in the system, the method might even be a good one, this will still happen. (6/x)

And, at scale, smart teachers with good intentions, who are busy with other mandates, will "get" the new scheme with varying degrees of fidelity, and have varying understandings of the strengths and weaknesses, but they'll never have the investment of the developers (5/x)

If the school board adopts the program, they have to distill all this lived experience and developer expertise into a curriculum guide, and then send it to already-existing teachers, who have a lot on their plate, and for whom this particular method isn't a calling or a mission, it's a mandate (4/x)

The smart people who developed the program know how to adapt to the reactions of the students, where the curriculum is weak and where it's strong, where the bodies are buried.

They're sincere and well-intentioned and capable, they believe in the method, and in the pilot, they make it work. (3/x)

The problem is that pilot programs from education innovators that make it to the school board are of course successful -- the unsuccessful ones don't get that far.

But some of them are successful because they're run by smart people who understand the limits of the new approach. (2/x)

I have some second-hand knowledge about education policy (a relative of mine was on a school board in a mid-sized Canadian city); one insight that has stuck with me, and been valuable elsewhere, is the problem of scaling up pilot programs.

The problem isn't scale per-se, but it's related. (1/x)

A few years ago, I did a bit of a dive into what exactly "top fuel" dragsters burn, and it's quite the engineering story.

Along the way, I also learned a bit about how gasoline is, as you say, a deeply unholy concoction.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel

Whatever happened to Time Cube guy anyways?

[Googles]

OMG there's a Wikipedia page. That's top-tier, gotta respect that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

In the late 1980s, there was a purple M1 that I used to see around the campus of my university from time to time. Pictures don't do them justice, they're incredibly low, and wide -- must corner like a dream!