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.
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.
generationP · 53m ago
NB: None of what you are saying is confirmed by the WP page you are citing.
pierrec · 2h ago
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 · 1h ago
> 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.
_alternator_ · 1h ago
The general vibe of this magazine: support mainstreaming of eugenics ideas (and now eigenicists), the ubermensch / great man theory of history, and other ideas that we’ve largely shied away from for the last 75 years.
avs733 · 1h ago
And cloak it in layers of language so that a quick read doesn’t catch it. It’s like human prompt poisoning.
aiman3 · 1h ago
when everyone is racist, include your mom Momtin luther-king, then there is no point to have a category called "racist comments".
svat · 1h ago
A fun fact surprisingly not mentioned in the article, and which I thought would be topical at this time, is that the Romanians apparently love their math olympiads so much that they recently elected as their president an International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) medalist. The current president Nicușor Dan had perfect scores at the IMO both times he participated (one of only 12 students so far with a perfect score in each of their ≥2 participations [1]). In fact at IMO 1988 he was one of only 11 students who solved the famous/notorious “Vieta jumping” problem [2], which eluded even Terence Tao (who, to be fair, was participating at only 13 years old!).
The Wikipedia section of “Notable [IMO] participants” has three sections: “Mathematicians”, “Computer scientists”, and “Other”, with Dan being the sole entry in the last one. :) [3]
As a Romanian who has been very involved in Olympiads as a kid, I can tell that most of this is accurate. I’ve also lived in Denmark at university for several years and can contrast educational systems from first hand experience.
The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here.
I’d also like to add the high school curriculum is very dense. The kind of math we did in 10th grade (there are 12 grades in Romania) was math people were only introduced to in their first year of university in Denmark.
There’re also a significant amount of optional after-school programs for contests, and I’ve only encountered students from good schools in them (as far as I can remember).
Yes, Romania is much better at filtering and at training people who are predisposed to intelectual work from a young age. Yes, Romania is bad at educating the masses.
However, I disagree with his conclusion and value judgement. I’d much rather see Romania adapt a system which educates everyone, rather than the world be better at filtering.
Most kids are overwhelmed by the complexity and volume (homework is brutal) but those few with an aptitude for it thrive and are picked up quickly by teachers looking to mentor them further for local, national and international contests.
koolba · 2h ago
Having seen what children are capable of, it’s neither overwhelming nor brutal.
What’s truly brutal is acquiescing to children droning away their youth mindlessly clicking meaningless games or watching vacuous streaming content. We live in what could be a golden age of thought but for the average kid it’s anything but.
ecshafer · 2h ago
I have to agree with you. Children are adaptable and will rise to the challenge. The west too often prefers to think children are capable of nothing, and have them wallow in an intellectual void.
koolba · 1h ago
It’s not just intellectual challenge that parents are unwilling to entertain. It’s part of a wider problem of avoiding any and all confrontation. The moment a child shows any disinterest, the activity is shut down.
It’s why you have a generation of kids that only eat chicken fingers and french fries. The average parent is unwilling to even teach their children to eat and enjoy actual food. Why bother when you can just heat up some tendies?
almostgotcaught · 1h ago
> What’s truly brutal is acquiescing to children droning away their youth mindlessly clicking meaningless games or watching vacuous streaming content
Both of these things are droning. One is just culturally acceptable. Don't think so? Stop by your local Kumon center some time.
kaladin-jasnah · 1h ago
My grade school education in the US was similar to this (although you needed to qualify for "accelerated" math). There were maybe 90 people every year in this. Those who did well did not make it much past CML or AMC, maybe out of lack of interest. You had to be excellent to move on to Olympiad level maths.
Side note: I have many objections with the competition-ifaction of these things. Not everyone finds their best performance in a competition environment. In CS, maybe we would look at competitive programming and CTFs (arguably CP can be very mathematical). Nonetheless, we use competitions to measure performance, which in some way selects out people who are talented in a setting that isn't a competition, and glorifies people who do play the game.
tzs · 38m ago
> Since 2020, Romania’s performance in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) has been nothing short of amazing. In 2022, Romania came in fifth overall, fourth in 2023, and twelfth in 2024.
Here's how those three years compare to surrounding years:
I'm not sure much can be read into this. The participants are usually high school students, and the top contestants from a given country usually participate in multiple years, and each country's team had 6 contestants.
It only takes getting a two or three outstanding students for a country to shoot significantly up for a couple years or so, depending on how close in age those students are.
For the 3 years the article mentions, 2022-2024, Romania had 2 people who were there all 3 years, 5 people who were there for 2 of the 3 years, and only 2 people who were only there for 1 year.
The 2023 team had 5 people from 2022. For 2024 half the 2023 team was replaced.
Looking at several years of their teams and individual performances it looks like they regularly have people who do well. A lot of people place in ranked 150+ one year, then shoot way up in the next year or next two, and then drop way down again.
For example they had a guy who 2018-2020 ranked 174, 15, 4. But they didn't in those last two years have anyone else also peaking.
In 2021-2024 they had a guy who went 143, 32, 1, 82.
In 2021-2023 they had a guy who went 319, 23, 46.
In 2017-2025 all the years except 2022-2024 had 2 people in the top 100. 2022 and 2023 had all 6 in the top 100, and 2024 had 3 in the top 100.
Looking at all this 2022-2024 plausibly could be explained as just a matter of timing. They seem to always have some people who are good enough to get a high score at least once. Some do it their first year and then don't participate any more. Some participate multiple times but only hit that high once. A smaller number hit multiple highs.
With just a small change in the timing of when some of these people appear or when they hit their peaks, so that they happen at the same time instead of missing each other by a small number of years, many of those other teams could before 2022 could have been top 10 teams.
nikolay · 23m ago
Bulgaria has been performing pretty well despite of the declining quality of education, which was stellar during Communism. Nobody was pushing us to advance in Math and Science; there was just nothing better to do. I wish these times could come back. Right now, kids are faced with all kinds of distractions and little incentive to go into studying seriously.
kazinator · 3h ago
The education system is stratified, keeping high-achieving students together, promoting them to schools with good teachers, etc.
OK, so then why don't the situations given in the elaborate description then show up in the statistics, like the "fat right tail" that isn't there?
It's because the students sent to olympiads are statistical outliers, too few in number to skew statistics. The system acts to identify and foster them, but to the detriment of national averages.
xyzzy123 · 2h ago
I wonder if national averages actually matter very much beyond being a vanity statistic? While it's good to have a generally more mathematically capable population, you would expect most actual "progress" (papers, discoveries, things built) to be made by the outliers.
I guess there's another layer tho in 2025 where, assuming they are rational, you wouldn't necessarily expect their efforts to benefit Romania.
patel011393 · 2h ago
Yes, a numerate population as assessed by national averages matters. A more numerate population reasons better about economic policies and may vote more wisely. Numeracy is closely tied to the ability to work in a variety of occupations. If we consider probability and statistics, the implications are especially salient.
xyzzy123 · 2h ago
This seems to me more like a reasonable hypothesis than a foregone conclusion.
Personally I suspect there's a floor (can read a chart, understands growth rates and compounding in general) which the public need to assess arguments constructed by specialists, while the rest is mostly understanding ideology.
The reason I believe that is, I think I can pretty much predict 100% of the conclusion of most articles written for the public by knowing the names & affiliations of the authors and the topic. The only uncertainty is what sources and statistics they will pick to reach the conclusion required by their ideology.
chatmasta · 1h ago
A numerate and literate population matters for many reasons, but in theory it’s possible to field a strong team for the Olympiad despite an abysmal national average literacy level. Just look at North Korea for example. They’ve got a “fat right tail” of sophisticated hackers but on average their literacy is terrible.
chatmasta · 1h ago
Idiot author aside, even if the students were outliers being sent to the Olympiad, that would not explain the consistent performance over decades. Relative to the size of the country, and compared to the other dominant nations, the outliers seem disproportionate.
alexey-salmin · 2h ago
> The system acts to identify and foster them, but to the detriment of national averages.
This is the usual argument against stratified education systems but is it proven in any way? My experience with stratified systems is that they increase both high quantiles and the average. Maybe (even if not established), maybe they reduce low quantiles like the 0.1th, but very unlikely they damage the average. Quite the opposite.
It's kind of like this idea that communism makes an average citizen richer which sounds logical, but in the end everyone's poorer. Remove the stratification and there's no incentive to do anything.
LarsDu88 · 1h ago
Author aside I thought this was a very interesting answer to a question I didn't know I had.
I had been thinking that sending my children to a school with high achievers could leave her at a relative disadvantage but this data would seem to say otherwise.
I wonder if this conflicts with Malcolm Gladwell's observations on one's relative ranking when it comes to college matriculation (that its more important to be at a high percentile of your institution than your global rank)
LarsDu88 · 1h ago
After looking into the author a bit. Ugh
chatmasta · 1h ago
What is the answer that you found? All I see is a marginally defensible claim in the 24th paragraph. I stopped reading after that, although there were only a few paragraphs left.
akoboldfrying · 3h ago
This is a very interesting topic and the article seems quite thorough. But I have trouble interpreting the crucial "School and track sorting can bolster or bust academic achievement" plots: The y axis is labelled "Graduation score percentile", but it has negative numbers on the scale. How are these values being corrected?
The series for 1-school towns on the left plot is basically flat; am I supposed to believe that, in such towns, students entering the school with a 0.5 on the high school admission test appear at the same exit exam percentile (implying that they have the same average exit exam scores) as those who entered with a 9.5? That can't possibly be true.
ETA: I also thought the conclusion -- that other countries should adopt a similar education model -- was out of step with most of the body text, which seemed to stress the downsides for weaker students. (There's no actual contradiction here, and perhaps the claim about most of society's advances being due to the top-end achievers was intended to justify this angle, but I was nevertheless surprised that there wasn't much discussion of why this upside should overpower the concerns for weaker students.)
f33d5173 · 1h ago
It says "effect" of school sorting. So the "graduation score percentile" must be the change in percentile due to school sorting.
alephnerd · 3h ago
> That can't possibly be true
It tracks with spatial inequality.
A 1 school town is highly likely to be a small rural town with limited economic prospects. Like plenty of CEE countries, the overwhelming majority of opportunities have historically been clustered in the capital and a couple regional cities.
The kind of town or village with only a single school is going to have fewer social benefits or services compared to an urban school.
Basically, what it is saying is students in those kinds of towns are s** out of luck statistically speaking compared to their urban peers.
There's a reason Romania's HDI has remained lower than Russia's until recently thanks to EU funding to help develop Romania (which is now on track to become a major economic pole in the CEE)
Edit: can't reply
> A lot turns on this. (I suppose I could read the underlying paper, but I'm lazy.)
I recommend checking it out. It explains the methodology and some potential wonkiness. It's always good to read the docs
akoboldfrying · 3h ago
I acknowledge that effect is present, but it's simply not strong enough to dominate natural variation in ability (for which high school entrance exam scores are a proxy) to the point where the results are completely flat -- in fact, students who achieved the highest scores on the entrance exam were slightly lower in exit scores on average than those with low or medium entrance scores!
What this tells me is that some kind of correction is being applied to those y values (we already know this because of negatives numbers on a "percentile" axis) -- but what?
A lot turns on this. (I suppose I could read the underlying paper, but I'm lazy.)
scotty79 · 2h ago
I think Poland is in very similar spot, often punching above its weight in software and math. My own amateur explanation is that Polish language is pretty complex and very particular about correct words and word forms. So Polish kids get a good training in keeping track of details of notations just by learning their native language.
matesz · 1h ago
And then there is China - remember that IOI for instance accepts 4 people from each country.
After all it all comes down to individuals. In Poland, there is famous informatics high school teacher who is credited for producing most IOI/IOM medalist per high school pupil in the world I believe.
They have special training program there. Another thing is to actually find geniuses, obviously. And if you don’t believe in geniuses, meet Jake - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OR36jrx_L44
For example, Jakub Pachocki (director of engineering of OpenAI) who graduated this high school, actually was on the verge of getting F from maths in his previous high school, because of problems being to easy I believe. Then they made the transfer where he could finally thrive. Interestingly, he wanted to do phd in 2 years in University of Warsaw, but people there didn’t want to allow it just because so they lost him - he went to do his PhD at Carnegie Mellon.
To summarise, from what I understand formula would be something like genius + great, inspiring and allowing teacher(s) + special personalised teaching programs + supportive environment.
Also don’t assume that these outliers are testament to the level of education of general population.
_alternator_ · 2h ago
This magazine regularly publishes neo-fascist works that are clothed in techno-libertarian garb. Take this article [1]. Highlights include fawning homages to Werner von Braun while failing to mention his ardent pro-Nazi views, support for Cortes’ conquest of the new world, and a general vibe supporting the ubermensch/great man theory of history (as here).
They’ve recently toned things down a bit, but it’s hard not to notice this vibe once you see it.
> neo-fascist works that are clothed in techno-libertarian garb. Take this article [1]. Highlights include fawning homages to Werner von Braun while failing to mention his ardent pro-Nazi views, support for Cortes’ conquest of the new world, and a general vibe supporting the ubermensch/great man theory of history (as here).
I like how you imply that celebrating the space program, the Age of Discovery and math Olympiads is neo-fascist. Tells a lot about what neo-fascism apparently is.
cyberax · 3h ago
Well, you set up a system that fosters competition, you get excellence as a result.
Ironically, the US schools do have tracking. For athletics.
The US absolutely _needs_ to have a school system that challenges students. No more nonsense about racist algebra.
kazinator · 3h ago
You get excellence in a tiny number of individuals who don't budge the statistics. The national averages are poor, and the excelling individuals are not even numerous enough to create a "fat right tail".
oefrha · 1h ago
Scientific and technological breakthroughs are created by the few. Always been, always will be. Fewer than 1 in 10,000 people are responsible for the current AI breakthroughs for instance, and I’m being conservative. You don’t need a fat right tail to completely change your country; of course, most of your tiny number of excellent individuals leaving for richer countries is a different problem altogether.
dcsommer · 2h ago
This is interesting if true, but without data I can't take this claim at face value.
derbOac · 3h ago
IMHO there should be challenges but also opportunities for self correction and movement. The problem with test score stratification is that you start treating kids as unchanging objects being measured by an infallible yardstick, when neither assumption is true.
It's not racism it's essentialism and poor education. An ideal educational system would tailor material and projects to an individual student and adjust at the rate they improve.
faangguyindia · 3h ago
"When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" is known as Goodhart's Law
airstrike · 3h ago
The parent is arguing for a target, not for a metric, so Goodhart's Law doesn't apply here.
faangguyindia · 2h ago
I didn't know Olympiads do not have any score (metric). Thank you.
cyberax · 3h ago
This is a BS saying because it's so easy to find counterexamples.
Let's try to use the number of child deaths, for example. By your saying, trying to do that is bad. Because governments probably will somehow resurrect dead children to look good at this metric. Right?
_DeadFred_ · 2h ago
Look at what France, Japan, and USA consider childhood deaths. Back when I did medical software and wrote reports, France and Japan both lumped at lot of deaths post birth into 'death at birth' to lower their childhood death statistics.
devmor · 2h ago
No, but it is easy to see how reporting the death of children could be withheld - say for instance, if this metric had penalties associated with it.
alephnerd · 3h ago
Tl;dr - Romania, like other Eastern European states, uses "tracking" or separate educational streams, so students from "National Colleges" (the top tier of Romanian high schools) tend to be overrepresented.
> The design of Romania’s educational system makes it perhaps the most stratified educational system in the world
> One of the cruel parts of the Romanian system is that, though sorting is nationally available, students do not have equal opportunities to sort. Students located in smaller towns have fewer high school options to select from unless they’re among the few who opt into a military academy, which means joining the military
> This combined sorting between schools and tracks means that low-ability students get stuck with other low-ability students, and high-ability students are surrounded by other high-ability students. In effect, peer groups throughout high school are extremely homogeneous.
----------
While this is good for identifying talent for Olympiads, it's questionable whether this is a net benefit for Romania as a whole. Neighboring Poland doesn't have the same level of tracking in it's educational system and has much stronger human capital based on HDI compared to Romania, despite both being roughly comparable to each other in the 1990s.
Human capital isn't developed by having a minority of students becoming the cream of the crop, it comes by helping all students get the option or ability to rise to the academic level at which they can succeed irrespective of geographic location (small town vs city), ethnicity, or economic class.
Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.
And anecdotally at least, I went to HS and college with a decent number of national and international Olympiad winners (one of whom was both a IMO and IPhO team member concurrently), and while they did decent in life (some HFT, mostly academia) it wasn't much different of an outcome compared to our peers who didn't partake in those olympiads.
This shouldn't dissuade people from doing Olympiads if they wish, but targeting Olympiad success for the sake of Olympiad success seems toxic and a waste of resources.
Edit: cannot reply
> Cyberax
I am not opposed to students participating in Olympiads od they chose so with full autonomy and independence, just like I am not opposed to students who want to do well in sports because they like sports.
If you are forcing your kid to be a tier 1 quarterback OR a IMO participant, you aren't making them a well rounded student.
And if you as a society make "being a football player" or "being a topper" the primary goal, you aren't actually identifying new talent, because the only way to rise to the top in a field is if you have an actual aptitude AND interest.
There's a reason why China and India are seeing significant social opposition from younger generations about "test driven" and "rote" culture, the same way plenty of boomer nerds on HN who grew up in the 80s and 90s were probably ostracized for not being into football (idk - I wasn't around for much of the 90s, I'm subsisting of pop culture from that era like Daria)
jmspring · 3h ago
I don’t necessarily see a problem with enabling like talented groups to be mingled together, that said it depends on the metrics. A friend who had a 3.2 in HS did way better in life than several 4.0+ students.
The other end of the spectrum is the way most of the US handles high school. Long gone are gifted and talented programs before high school and in many cases, for instance those with an ability for math are stuck in classes with those that will top out before algebra.
I understand your point, but the catering to the mediocre that happens these days in US grade schools isn’t the right answer either.
alephnerd · 3h ago
The issue with "gifted only schools" is they end up eating the bulk of funds and legitimately don't have a strong predictive capacity on student success that couldn't already be explained the parental background and early childhood care.
In my case, I never placed in gifted academic programs in elementary and middle, but by HS was able to take 14 AP classes (and auto shop - always liked tinkering since elementary school; which was a major reason why I never placed well in gifted programs) and end up at HYS. Most of my peers there similarly didn't attended gifted programs or high schools - amongst the non-legacies the biggest predictor of success was SAT scores and GPA.
While giving and funding academic and gifted tracks within schools should be allowed, "gifted" students should not be segregated from "normal" students. There's no reason a high school can't both offer as many AP classes as possible ALONG with vocational classes.
Edit: can't reply
> Why should gifted schools need more money than normal schools
It's not that they need more funding. The issue is gifted programs tend to overlap with upper income families [0] - the same kinds of families that are overrepresented in School Boards and PTAs [1]
I'm not saying go all "San Francisco 2.0", but recognize that gifted only schools does lead to a moral perception that other students are not as deserving for funding or are "bad students".
> the highest-ability schools receive a decrement in funding
But are overrepresented in urban areas where human capital is significantly higher than rural areas within Romania [2]. Students in rural and small town schools are less liked to be as healthy or a affluent as students in cities or major urban centers, and this does have a tangible downstream effect on education as a whole.
Note how I said << I'm not saying go all "San Francisco 2.0" >>
There is a happy middle ground between being an exclusionary system like Romania's or a delusional bussed system like San Francisco.
Giving the example of a city with a population the size of Cincinnati is clearly a facile argument, as it is obviously not representative of the rest of California, let alone the US.
jmspring · 2h ago
That is a lot to read. I’m no longer in my 40s. Grade school - in San Jose - gifted and talented classes were classes at the school not a separate school.
Sadly education has evolved where schools teach to the norm rather than acknowledging people have different strengths and weaknesses.
It does not require separate schools, it needs funding and more importantly, someone good at math needs to be able to work with others good at math.
The educational curriculum in the US for grade school has been standardized to the mediocre and any attempt to encourage gifted is considered a problem.
alephnerd · 2h ago
I agree with you!
Give students the ability to test out of classes and/or dual enroll in community colleges, BUT make sure they are all still in the same school meeting and greeting and bumping into each other.
Dumbing down curricula is a bad move, and preventing students from being able to test out or take classes earlier is also a bad move. But segregating students into different schools based on academic ability is equally as bad.
> Grade school - in San Jose - gifted and talented classes were classes at the school not a separate school
Yep. This is a model I agree with, and am a product of as well being a fellow Bay Area native
jmspring · 1h ago
The funny thing, I went to five schools, 3 different districts across Bay Area cities. All had accommodations for different levels. High school, I ended up at UCSC my freshman year with enough credits from transfer in (from high school school) and my first quarter as a junior. Most were community college courses friends and I were interested in separate from school.
My step daughter, I hear her curriculum and shake my head (my BS was in computer engineering and computational chemistry), I could not help with the bs “common core” forced on her.
Thankfully she settled into the ability to have college courses in her last year.
It’s ridiculous how much of a push there is “standardizing” the skills of individuals. When their strengths should be encouraged.
cyberax · 3h ago
> The issue with "gifted only schools" is they end up eating the bulk of funds
No, they don't. If you look at SF, the high-performing Lowell High gets a bit _less_ funding than the average for the district. Stuyvesant in NYC is right at the average spending.
I studied in a magnet school with other gifted kids, including a future Olympiad winner. Our school barely had heating in winter. It's really the _other_ kids that make all the difference.
IncreasePosts · 3h ago
Why should gifted schools need more money than normal schools? I would imagine "problematic children schools" would need the most funds because you would need the lowest teacher:student ratio to maintain order
akoboldfrying · 3h ago
>The issue with "gifted only schools" is they end up eating the bulk of funds
The article points out that the opposite is the case in Romania: the highest-ability schools receive a decrement in funding.
No comments yet
alexey-salmin · 2h ago
> Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.
Path to FyzTech lies through FMSHs which accept high school students largely via regional-level Olympiads. And path to that lies through the Olympiad "circle" in your local school.
You probably can build a stratified education system without Olympiads, but as a matter of fact in Russia they do actually play an important role in the overall structure.
jjtheblunt · 3h ago
> Neighboring Poland
they aren't neighbors.
What's HDI ?
alephnerd · 3h ago
> they aren't neighbors
Lviv will always be Lwow in my heart /s
Yep, but the distance between both isn't significant both physically and culturally.
> What's HDI
Human Development Index - it's a composite index that combines health, education, and economic indicators in a quick benchmark to compare relatively human capital development.
cyberax · 3h ago
> Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.
First, if you remove the Olympiad-based admission, there's no guarantee that these students could _get_ into the top-level universities.
Second, people in the US _love_ to point out that athletics "builds the character" and sets people up for success later in life. Well, do you think that training for Olympiads and competing in high-stakes academic tournaments also does nothing?
diego_moita · 2h ago
A better question is: "Why should country X perform well in international Olympiads"?
It is just entertainment. It doesn't have any meaningful, deep or relevant impact on culture and quality of life of a country. At best it boost narcissistic jingoism and nationalism.
Life in a country won't get any better because someone that carries their flag appeared on television winning a medal. This is just a globalized version of the Roman "panis et circensis", but without the panis.
constantinum · 1h ago
TL;DR
"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."
slt2021 · 2h ago
Romania is wasting taxpayer money to groom bright students and then let them leave Romania for some higher GDP country
credit_guy · 1h ago
I would downvote you, but I won't, and instead I will leave a reply.
I was one of those students who left. Romania did not waste any more taxpayer money on me than on other students, and that money that it spent was really meager by any Western standards.
My kids now go to public school in NYC. The city spends north of $30k for each of them [1]. Yet, if they decide to leave the US nobody will complain that they were groomed with precious taxpayer money, and they betrayed the trust placed in them. It is understood that every person has the right pursue their own happiness the best way they can.
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
> 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.
This struck me as…odd…before I even saw the parent comment.
The Wikipedia section of “Notable [IMO] participants” has three sections: “Mathematicians”, “Computer scientists”, and “Other”, with Dan being the sole entry in the last one. :) [3]
[1]: http://imo-official.org/hall.aspx?column=perfectscores&order...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vieta_jumping&old...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Internati...
The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here.
I’d also like to add the high school curriculum is very dense. The kind of math we did in 10th grade (there are 12 grades in Romania) was math people were only introduced to in their first year of university in Denmark.
There’re also a significant amount of optional after-school programs for contests, and I’ve only encountered students from good schools in them (as far as I can remember).
Yes, Romania is much better at filtering and at training people who are predisposed to intelectual work from a young age. Yes, Romania is bad at educating the masses.
However, I disagree with his conclusion and value judgement. I’d much rather see Romania adapt a system which educates everyone, rather than the world be better at filtering.
Most kids are overwhelmed by the complexity and volume (homework is brutal) but those few with an aptitude for it thrive and are picked up quickly by teachers looking to mentor them further for local, national and international contests.
What’s truly brutal is acquiescing to children droning away their youth mindlessly clicking meaningless games or watching vacuous streaming content. We live in what could be a golden age of thought but for the average kid it’s anything but.
It’s why you have a generation of kids that only eat chicken fingers and french fries. The average parent is unwilling to even teach their children to eat and enjoy actual food. Why bother when you can just heat up some tendies?
Both of these things are droning. One is just culturally acceptable. Don't think so? Stop by your local Kumon center some time.
Side note: I have many objections with the competition-ifaction of these things. Not everyone finds their best performance in a competition environment. In CS, maybe we would look at competitive programming and CTFs (arguably CP can be very mathematical). Nonetheless, we use competitions to measure performance, which in some way selects out people who are talented in a setting that isn't a competition, and glorifies people who do play the game.
Here's how those three years compare to surrounding years:
I'm not sure much can be read into this. The participants are usually high school students, and the top contestants from a given country usually participate in multiple years, and each country's team had 6 contestants.It only takes getting a two or three outstanding students for a country to shoot significantly up for a couple years or so, depending on how close in age those students are.
For the 3 years the article mentions, 2022-2024, Romania had 2 people who were there all 3 years, 5 people who were there for 2 of the 3 years, and only 2 people who were only there for 1 year.
The 2023 team had 5 people from 2022. For 2024 half the 2023 team was replaced.
Looking at several years of their teams and individual performances it looks like they regularly have people who do well. A lot of people place in ranked 150+ one year, then shoot way up in the next year or next two, and then drop way down again.
For example they had a guy who 2018-2020 ranked 174, 15, 4. But they didn't in those last two years have anyone else also peaking.
In 2021-2024 they had a guy who went 143, 32, 1, 82.
In 2021-2023 they had a guy who went 319, 23, 46.
In 2017-2025 all the years except 2022-2024 had 2 people in the top 100. 2022 and 2023 had all 6 in the top 100, and 2024 had 3 in the top 100.
Looking at all this 2022-2024 plausibly could be explained as just a matter of timing. They seem to always have some people who are good enough to get a high score at least once. Some do it their first year and then don't participate any more. Some participate multiple times but only hit that high once. A smaller number hit multiple highs.
With just a small change in the timing of when some of these people appear or when they hit their peaks, so that they happen at the same time instead of missing each other by a small number of years, many of those other teams could before 2022 could have been top 10 teams.
OK, so then why don't the situations given in the elaborate description then show up in the statistics, like the "fat right tail" that isn't there?
It's because the students sent to olympiads are statistical outliers, too few in number to skew statistics. The system acts to identify and foster them, but to the detriment of national averages.
I guess there's another layer tho in 2025 where, assuming they are rational, you wouldn't necessarily expect their efforts to benefit Romania.
Personally I suspect there's a floor (can read a chart, understands growth rates and compounding in general) which the public need to assess arguments constructed by specialists, while the rest is mostly understanding ideology.
The reason I believe that is, I think I can pretty much predict 100% of the conclusion of most articles written for the public by knowing the names & affiliations of the authors and the topic. The only uncertainty is what sources and statistics they will pick to reach the conclusion required by their ideology.
This is the usual argument against stratified education systems but is it proven in any way? My experience with stratified systems is that they increase both high quantiles and the average. Maybe (even if not established), maybe they reduce low quantiles like the 0.1th, but very unlikely they damage the average. Quite the opposite.
It's kind of like this idea that communism makes an average citizen richer which sounds logical, but in the end everyone's poorer. Remove the stratification and there's no incentive to do anything.
I had been thinking that sending my children to a school with high achievers could leave her at a relative disadvantage but this data would seem to say otherwise.
I wonder if this conflicts with Malcolm Gladwell's observations on one's relative ranking when it comes to college matriculation (that its more important to be at a high percentile of your institution than your global rank)
The series for 1-school towns on the left plot is basically flat; am I supposed to believe that, in such towns, students entering the school with a 0.5 on the high school admission test appear at the same exit exam percentile (implying that they have the same average exit exam scores) as those who entered with a 9.5? That can't possibly be true.
ETA: I also thought the conclusion -- that other countries should adopt a similar education model -- was out of step with most of the body text, which seemed to stress the downsides for weaker students. (There's no actual contradiction here, and perhaps the claim about most of society's advances being due to the top-end achievers was intended to justify this angle, but I was nevertheless surprised that there wasn't much discussion of why this upside should overpower the concerns for weaker students.)
It tracks with spatial inequality.
A 1 school town is highly likely to be a small rural town with limited economic prospects. Like plenty of CEE countries, the overwhelming majority of opportunities have historically been clustered in the capital and a couple regional cities.
The kind of town or village with only a single school is going to have fewer social benefits or services compared to an urban school.
Basically, what it is saying is students in those kinds of towns are s** out of luck statistically speaking compared to their urban peers.
There's a reason Romania's HDI has remained lower than Russia's until recently thanks to EU funding to help develop Romania (which is now on track to become a major economic pole in the CEE)
Edit: can't reply
> A lot turns on this. (I suppose I could read the underlying paper, but I'm lazy.)
I recommend checking it out. It explains the methodology and some potential wonkiness. It's always good to read the docs
What this tells me is that some kind of correction is being applied to those y values (we already know this because of negatives numbers on a "percentile" axis) -- but what?
A lot turns on this. (I suppose I could read the underlying paper, but I'm lazy.)
After all it all comes down to individuals. In Poland, there is famous informatics high school teacher who is credited for producing most IOI/IOM medalist per high school pupil in the world I believe.
They have special training program there. Another thing is to actually find geniuses, obviously. And if you don’t believe in geniuses, meet Jake - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OR36jrx_L44
For example, Jakub Pachocki (director of engineering of OpenAI) who graduated this high school, actually was on the verge of getting F from maths in his previous high school, because of problems being to easy I believe. Then they made the transfer where he could finally thrive. Interestingly, he wanted to do phd in 2 years in University of Warsaw, but people there didn’t want to allow it just because so they lost him - he went to do his PhD at Carnegie Mellon.
To summarise, from what I understand formula would be something like genius + great, inspiring and allowing teacher(s) + special personalised teaching programs + supportive environment.
Also don’t assume that these outliers are testament to the level of education of general population.
They’ve recently toned things down a bit, but it’s hard not to notice this vibe once you see it.
[1] https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/04/25/entrepreneurial-stat...
I like how you imply that celebrating the space program, the Age of Discovery and math Olympiads is neo-fascist. Tells a lot about what neo-fascism apparently is.
DUH.
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus also have similar systems, and they punch way above their weight in math and CS: https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=RUS https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=UKR https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=BLR
Ironically, the US schools do have tracking. For athletics.
The US absolutely _needs_ to have a school system that challenges students. No more nonsense about racist algebra.
It's not racism it's essentialism and poor education. An ideal educational system would tailor material and projects to an individual student and adjust at the rate they improve.
Let's try to use the number of child deaths, for example. By your saying, trying to do that is bad. Because governments probably will somehow resurrect dead children to look good at this metric. Right?
> The design of Romania’s educational system makes it perhaps the most stratified educational system in the world
> One of the cruel parts of the Romanian system is that, though sorting is nationally available, students do not have equal opportunities to sort. Students located in smaller towns have fewer high school options to select from unless they’re among the few who opt into a military academy, which means joining the military
> This combined sorting between schools and tracks means that low-ability students get stuck with other low-ability students, and high-ability students are surrounded by other high-ability students. In effect, peer groups throughout high school are extremely homogeneous.
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While this is good for identifying talent for Olympiads, it's questionable whether this is a net benefit for Romania as a whole. Neighboring Poland doesn't have the same level of tracking in it's educational system and has much stronger human capital based on HDI compared to Romania, despite both being roughly comparable to each other in the 1990s.
Human capital isn't developed by having a minority of students becoming the cream of the crop, it comes by helping all students get the option or ability to rise to the academic level at which they can succeed irrespective of geographic location (small town vs city), ethnicity, or economic class.
Ik people tend to point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian Olympiad students as being examples of success, but most of them also attended top universities due to their Olympiad attendance, so I doubt the Olympiad itself had an impact compared to attending a Tsinghua, FyzTech (Citadel still hires from there for the London office at least circa 2023 despite the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia), or IIT Delhi.
And anecdotally at least, I went to HS and college with a decent number of national and international Olympiad winners (one of whom was both a IMO and IPhO team member concurrently), and while they did decent in life (some HFT, mostly academia) it wasn't much different of an outcome compared to our peers who didn't partake in those olympiads.
This shouldn't dissuade people from doing Olympiads if they wish, but targeting Olympiad success for the sake of Olympiad success seems toxic and a waste of resources.
Edit: cannot reply
> Cyberax
I am not opposed to students participating in Olympiads od they chose so with full autonomy and independence, just like I am not opposed to students who want to do well in sports because they like sports.
If you are forcing your kid to be a tier 1 quarterback OR a IMO participant, you aren't making them a well rounded student.
And if you as a society make "being a football player" or "being a topper" the primary goal, you aren't actually identifying new talent, because the only way to rise to the top in a field is if you have an actual aptitude AND interest.
There's a reason why China and India are seeing significant social opposition from younger generations about "test driven" and "rote" culture, the same way plenty of boomer nerds on HN who grew up in the 80s and 90s were probably ostracized for not being into football (idk - I wasn't around for much of the 90s, I'm subsisting of pop culture from that era like Daria)
The other end of the spectrum is the way most of the US handles high school. Long gone are gifted and talented programs before high school and in many cases, for instance those with an ability for math are stuck in classes with those that will top out before algebra.
I understand your point, but the catering to the mediocre that happens these days in US grade schools isn’t the right answer either.
In my case, I never placed in gifted academic programs in elementary and middle, but by HS was able to take 14 AP classes (and auto shop - always liked tinkering since elementary school; which was a major reason why I never placed well in gifted programs) and end up at HYS. Most of my peers there similarly didn't attended gifted programs or high schools - amongst the non-legacies the biggest predictor of success was SAT scores and GPA.
While giving and funding academic and gifted tracks within schools should be allowed, "gifted" students should not be segregated from "normal" students. There's no reason a high school can't both offer as many AP classes as possible ALONG with vocational classes.
Edit: can't reply
> Why should gifted schools need more money than normal schools
It's not that they need more funding. The issue is gifted programs tend to overlap with upper income families [0] - the same kinds of families that are overrepresented in School Boards and PTAs [1]
I'm not saying go all "San Francisco 2.0", but recognize that gifted only schools does lead to a moral perception that other students are not as deserving for funding or are "bad students".
[0] - https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2019/09/30/socioeconomic-status-...
[1] - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584188180...
> the highest-ability schools receive a decrement in funding
But are overrepresented in urban areas where human capital is significantly higher than rural areas within Romania [2]. Students in rural and small town schools are less liked to be as healthy or a affluent as students in cities or major urban centers, and this does have a tangible downstream effect on education as a whole.
[2] - https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/abs/2021/06...
> If you look at SF...
Note how I said << I'm not saying go all "San Francisco 2.0" >>
There is a happy middle ground between being an exclusionary system like Romania's or a delusional bussed system like San Francisco.
Giving the example of a city with a population the size of Cincinnati is clearly a facile argument, as it is obviously not representative of the rest of California, let alone the US.
Sadly education has evolved where schools teach to the norm rather than acknowledging people have different strengths and weaknesses.
It does not require separate schools, it needs funding and more importantly, someone good at math needs to be able to work with others good at math.
The educational curriculum in the US for grade school has been standardized to the mediocre and any attempt to encourage gifted is considered a problem.
Give students the ability to test out of classes and/or dual enroll in community colleges, BUT make sure they are all still in the same school meeting and greeting and bumping into each other.
Dumbing down curricula is a bad move, and preventing students from being able to test out or take classes earlier is also a bad move. But segregating students into different schools based on academic ability is equally as bad.
> Grade school - in San Jose - gifted and talented classes were classes at the school not a separate school
Yep. This is a model I agree with, and am a product of as well being a fellow Bay Area native
My step daughter, I hear her curriculum and shake my head (my BS was in computer engineering and computational chemistry), I could not help with the bs “common core” forced on her.
Thankfully she settled into the ability to have college courses in her last year.
It’s ridiculous how much of a push there is “standardizing” the skills of individuals. When their strengths should be encouraged.
No, they don't. If you look at SF, the high-performing Lowell High gets a bit _less_ funding than the average for the district. Stuyvesant in NYC is right at the average spending.
I studied in a magnet school with other gifted kids, including a future Olympiad winner. Our school barely had heating in winter. It's really the _other_ kids that make all the difference.
The article points out that the opposite is the case in Romania: the highest-ability schools receive a decrement in funding.
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Path to FyzTech lies through FMSHs which accept high school students largely via regional-level Olympiads. And path to that lies through the Olympiad "circle" in your local school.
You probably can build a stratified education system without Olympiads, but as a matter of fact in Russia they do actually play an important role in the overall structure.
they aren't neighbors.
What's HDI ?
Lviv will always be Lwow in my heart /s
Yep, but the distance between both isn't significant both physically and culturally.
> What's HDI
Human Development Index - it's a composite index that combines health, education, and economic indicators in a quick benchmark to compare relatively human capital development.
First, if you remove the Olympiad-based admission, there's no guarantee that these students could _get_ into the top-level universities.
Second, people in the US _love_ to point out that athletics "builds the character" and sets people up for success later in life. Well, do you think that training for Olympiads and competing in high-stakes academic tournaments also does nothing?
It is just entertainment. It doesn't have any meaningful, deep or relevant impact on culture and quality of life of a country. At best it boost narcissistic jingoism and nationalism.
Life in a country won't get any better because someone that carries their flag appeared on television winning a medal. This is just a globalized version of the Roman "panis et circensis", but without the panis.
"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."
I was one of those students who left. Romania did not waste any more taxpayer money on me than on other students, and that money that it spent was really meager by any Western standards.
My kids now go to public school in NYC. The city spends north of $30k for each of them [1]. Yet, if they decide to leave the US nobody will complain that they were groomed with precious taxpayer money, and they betrayed the trust placed in them. It is understood that every person has the right pursue their own happiness the best way they can.
[1] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/funding/funding-our-sch...
If they did, I'm sure you'd hear this complaint a lot more.