[patel011393]

I would like to point out for context that the author, Jordan Lasker, is a eugenist derided for shoddy science, falsely using university affiliations, and racist commentary.

I do not write this to contradict particular claims in the article above, but @cremieux should be read cautiously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Lasker

[chatmasta]

He should also be derided for terrible writing. It's not until the 24th paragraph (of 30 total) that we encounter something resembling a thesis.

> With all the pieces on the board, the key to Romania’s Olympiad success is three-fold: put the best students in the same classrooms, put the best teachers with the best students, and then incentivize schools, teachers, and students each to win Olympiads.

This could have been much shorter, but then the reader might notice the abject lack of supporting evidence for these central claims. I don't blame the author for burying them at the end.

[adrian_b]

I have no idea about author's background or about his other writings, but the conclusion quoted by you seems absolutely correct.

I do not understand why you say that it lacks supporting evidence.

Before this conclusion, the author has explained the system of national exams and of distribution into high schools and inside high schools, that ensures that the best students are grouped together and also that the best teachers are assigned to them.

There is no doubt that even if the average level of education is bad, this system guarantees that the best become very good and much better than students with similar native qualities who have stayed in high school in the middle of less capable colleagues, while being not taught things deemed too difficult for the general population. Moreover, the author has mentioned that the state provides rewards for good results at the International Olympiads, both for teachers and for students.

I do not see what more evidence could be brought. In my opinion the conclusion of the author is well supported and it explains why these students compete successfully against students from much bigger countries.

[generationP]

NB: None of what you are saying is confirmed by the WP page you are citing.

[Kudos]

None?

> Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics.

[pierrec]

This definitely adds a grain of salt, but as far as I can tell, none of that shows in the article, especially in the final paragraphs explaining how the elitist system is overall bad for the country. But it does make me wonder about possible hidden flaws in the methodology (I'm still confused at some of the earlier statistics contradicting the claims made later)

[avs733]

> Yet another possibility is that Romania has an undersampled ethnic group that overperforms, but whose schools aren’t tested very well. The only group this might be is Romanian Jews and using them as an explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that there are too few to realistically explain Romanian Olympiad performance. The second is that we know the identities of Olympiad participants from Romania, and they don’t seem to be Jewish.

This struck me as…odd…before I even saw the parent comment.

[blast]

Shouldn't everyone be read cautiously?

[borski]

Sure, but knowing the intention and bias of the author is sometimes more important than other times. For example, it doesn’t really matter what the bias is of the person giving you the weather report; the weather either is or isn’t accurate, based on the data.

The author of an article about how an education system is or should be structured, however, very much matters.