About 2Sigma School
Students with a personal tutor do far better than students in a regular class. Getting that result for a whole class is Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem, and it gave our company its name and its goal.
Read the founding storyWhere our name comes from
In 1984, the education researcher Benjamin Bloom reported on studies that compared students in regular classes of about 30 with students who each had a tutor. The tutored students did far better.
A tutor for every student costs more than most schools can pay. So Bloom asked: can most students in a regular class learn as well as students with a tutor? That question is why 2Sigma School exists.
2σ
The average tutored student scored about two standard deviations, or two sigma, above the average student in a regular class.
98%
Put another way, the average tutored student outscored 98% of the regular class.
A tutor starts from what the student knows, adjusts as they go, and helps the moment they get stuck. Alps brings those strengths to a regular class, and gives the teacher time to reach each student.
Before we built Alps, we taught computer science.
Summer 2020
With school moved online, our founder, Vishal Goenka, sat down to teach his son to program. With one-on-one help, his son was writing fluent Python within a couple of weeks.
Then
Vishal saw how many students never get that chance. So 2Sigma School set out to bring strong computer science courses to any student, with the reach of online learning and the strength of a teacher-led class.
Years of teaching
We taught high school computer science at partner schools for several years, with live and recorded lessons online. It showed us firsthand that classroom tools had to do much more for teachers and students.
2022
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education funded a research and development project, the first of two. More on our research
Today
Alps grew out of those years of teaching. We built it to give teachers the support we found missing, so every student can reach mastery. Its catalog has more than 40 titles, seven of them published by 2Sigma School.
Federally funded classroom research helped shape Alps.
U.S. Department of Education
IES funded two of our research and development projects. Both set out to show teachers how each student is learning and suggest what to do next.
A first prototype, tried out with teachers and students in a pilot.
A two-year project to build it into a full product, with feedback from teachers and students.
4
educators
250
high school students
IES reports that the prototype worked as intended, and that educators found what it showed about each student useful.
SRI International (opens in a new tab), an independent research institute, studied how well Alps works in real classrooms, with teachers who used it early.
Bloom showed that most students can reach a high level of learning with the right support. Alps is built on that belief.
Alps builds on what teachers know and do. It never replaces them.
There aren’t enough computer science teachers, and underserved students miss out most. We want every student to have a real chance to learn it.
We never sell student data or use it for ads, and we put our privacy commitments in signed agreements with districts. See how we protect student data.
We name every place Alps uses a language model, and we leave judgments about cheating to teachers.
What teachers and students tell us shapes what we build and fix next.
Vishal Goenka
Founder, CEO
Wharton MBA
IIT Kanpur B.Tech. in Computer Science
We had no computer science teacher, so our vice principal decided to learn the subject himself, and I got to join his pilot lessons. … It changed my life.
Vishal grew up in Nepal and first used a computer in the mid-1980s, at a boarding school in India. Computer science later brought him to the U.S. and to Google.
If you teach computer science, we built Alps for your class. Try it with your students, or talk with the people who made it.
Have a question? Write to support@2sigma.school.
