Fast forward to April: The Buchholz team won its 15th state title in 17 years at the Mu Alpha Theta math competition. In the 2020-21 school year, a larger number of its students qualified for a rigorous nationwide event called the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, which accepts the top 5% of scorers on a qualifying exam, than all but three other elite schools.
Colleagues and former team members say the success has less to do with Frazer’s own technical ability -- one of his former students, Ziwei Lu, actually teaches the toughest material -- and more to do with a culture that resembles Frazer’s Wall Street past.
“Winning and competing was so core to who he is, so for any student who had that itch it’s really a positive impact,” said Laura Chau, a Buchholz math team alum. Chau later studied engineering at Stanford and became the youngest-ever partner at Canaan Partners.
Summer Camp
Ellen Li competed on the team all four years before studying math at Harvard University and landing a job as a trader at Citadel Securities. Teamwork and solidarity were the key ingredients in the team’s success, Li said -- though the fact that Frazer runs a 20-hours-per-week summer math camp helps, too. Florida’s public schools on average offer about 72 hours a semester with teachers.
Yet when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Frazer took his competitive streak to a new level.
After in-person teaching was halted, he formally resigned from his job at Buchholz and snagged a space at a nearby church, where about 140 of his students gathered. He says parents were largely on board, even helping to raise funds to cover his lost wages. He’s since returned to the school.
Not everyone agreed with the approach, including his competitors. But, just like on Wall Street, the results speak for themselves.
Richard Rovere, the coach of the math team at Miami-area private school American Heritage, has adapted his own team’s methods over the years based on Frazer’s success. But that latest gambit was one he couldn’t follow.
“He gambled, he rolled the dice and he won,” Rovere said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.