Astral Codex Ten

Jack Despain Zhou

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Jack Despain Zhou

Article

Jack Despain Zhou is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 16, 2025 and October 13, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Trace (real name Jack Despain Zhou)”; “he and Jack Despain Zhou aka TracingWoodgrains will be doing a live conversation”; “CEP was founded by Jack Despain Zhou”. It most often appears alongside Scott, Center For Educational Progress, San Francisco.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: February 16, 2025
  • Last seen: October 13, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Open Thread 369
February 16, 2025 · Original source
1: You might remember TracingWoodgrains winning the 2019 SSC adversarial collaboration contest with his piece on whether schools adequately served advanced students. Six years later, Trace (real name Jack Despain Zhou) and Lillian Tara are starting the Center For Educational Progress, a think tank to promote their agenda (mostly ability tracking). Read the manifesto here. If you’re interested in volunteering, following along, or helping with funding, check out their Discord server.
Inline links: his piece on whether schools, are starting, Center For Educational Progress, here, their Discord server.
Bayes For Everyone
May 30, 2025 · Original source
[Editor’s note: I accept guest posts from certain people, especially past Book Review Contest winners. Brandon Hendrickson, whose review of The Educated Mind won the 2023 contest, has taken me up on this and submitted this essay. He writes at The Lost Tools of Learning and will be at LessOnline this weekend, where he and Jack Despain Zhou aka TracingWoodgrains will be doing a live conversation about education.]
Inline links: review of The Educated Mind, The Lost Tools of Learning, LessOnline
ACX Grants Results 2025
October 13, 2025 · Original source
Thomas Briggs, $5K, for the Center for Educational Progress. CEP was founded by Jack Despain Zhou, who you may know better by his blogging pseudonym TracingWoodgrains; he is currently on leave as he pursues his legal training, but will return next year. The Center advocates effective pedagogy, especially ability tracking, ie letting faster and slower students each move at their own pace. In practice, this seems to mean a lot of legal briefs telling San Francisco why they shouldn’t ban algebra in middle schools. We support their work and are happy to fill their suspiciously-low funding request.
Inline links: CEP, TracingWoodgrains