# Knowing When to Teach: Learning from Teachable Prefixes in Multilingual Reasoning Distillation | arXiv [Canonical reading](https://escapemeridian.com/readings/knowing-when-to-teach-learning-from-teachable-prefixes-in-1b80fd47) In this paper, Jaewon Cho and coauthors identify “Teacher Drift” in On-Policy Self-Distillation (OPSD): when a student makes mistakes in intermediate reasoning, the teacher may follow those incorrect steps rather than correct them. The authors report that this shift tends to happen earlier in lower-resource languages. They propose Teachable On-Policy Self-Distillation (TOPSD), which uses teacher-student likelihood to estimate where drift begins, then checks whether the teacher can recover the correct answer from a selected prefix. Distillation is applied only to prefixes that pass this verification. The authors report that experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning across ten languages and three model scales show TOPSD outperforming conventional OPSD, particularly in low- and medium-resource languages. Escape Meridian’s reading is that this approach makes the decision about where to teach part of the distillation process, rather than assuming that the teacher can use every student trajectory productively. The evidence provided here is the paper’s abstract; it does not give performance measurements or further experimental details. Headline and summary by Escape Meridian, prepared by Luna from the attributed source. A source check is not independent confirmation of the source’s claims. ## Original source arXiv cs.AI · Article Original source date: Nov 5, 2026 (2026-11-05). Date basis: Date basis not provided. Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-08T17:47:43.054Z. First observed: 2026-11-06T05:10:30.903Z. Retrieved: 2026-11-08T17:46:56.679Z. - [Knowing When to Teach: Learning from Teachable Prefixes in Multilingual Reasoning Distillation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Limits The supplied evidence is the paper’s abstract and does not provide performance measurements or further experimental details. The reported experiments concern multilingual mathematical reasoning; the supplied evidence does not report results on other reasoning tasks. The source page identifies the listed authors but provides no further context about their roles in the work. ## Open question Do TOPSD’s reported gains hold on reasoning tasks beyond multilingual mathematical reasoning? ## Source-stated The authors identify Teacher Drift: a teacher may follow a student's incorrect intermediate steps instead of correcting them. > as these mistakes accumulate, the teacher may follow the student's incorrect steps instead of correcting them. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source-stated The authors report that Teacher Drift tends to occur earlier in lower-resource languages. > this shift tends to occur earlier in lower-resource languages. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source-stated TOPSD estimates where drift begins using teacher-student likelihood, selects a prefix, and applies distillation only if the teacher can recover the correct answer from it. > It then verifies whether the teacher can recover the correct answer from that prefix, applying distillation only to prefixes that pass verification. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source-stated The authors report that TOPSD outperforms conventional OPSD in experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning, particularly in low- and medium-resource languages. > Experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning across ten languages and three model scales show that TOPSD consistently outperforms conventional OPSD, particularly in low- and medium-resource languages. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Escape Meridian interpretation The abstract reports results for multilingual mathematical reasoning, leaving performance on other reasoning tasks unresolved in the supplied evidence. > Experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning across ten languages and three model scales - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source and contributor context Cho, Jaewon, Yoon, Minseo, Park, Jinyoung, Seo, Jinwoo, Chu, Jaewon, Oh, Alice, Kim, Hyunwoo J. · Article author These are credits stated by the source; they do not establish a profile match or authorship of every passage. ## Source media No suitable media was found by the supported page extraction. ## Terms and references Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement. ## arXiv arXiv is a research manuscript repository where authors share papers that may not yet have been peer reviewed. - [Explore this context](/entities/arxiv) - [Reference](https://arxiv.org/) - [Reference](https://info.arxiv.org/help/api/index.html) ## Editorial provenance Version 1. Publication ID: 53617c76-8439-47db-82ca-17a80c50ffa2. Prepared by gpt-6-luna; grounding review by gpt-6-luna. Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-08T17:47:43.054Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true. Editorial selection: accept; reasons: material\_development. Observation: ae1e98bae53313b72d0a59071f9128c4ed56c6f8ae9cafb21f04062d7c9236c1. Source text hash: 21aa5edfd437b6f4f293ea56b30beffaa1e239a62729750b909e4e306cbf1d53. ## Revision and source-check history ### Version 1 — 2026-11-08T17:47:43.054Z In this paper, Jaewon Cho and coauthors identify “Teacher Drift” in On-Policy Self-Distillation (OPSD): when a student makes mistakes in intermediate reasoning, the teacher may follow those incorrect steps rather than correct them. The authors report that this shift tends to happen earlier in lower-resource languages. They propose Teachable On-Policy Self-Distillation (TOPSD), which uses teacher-student likelihood to estimate where drift begins, then checks whether the teacher can recover the correct answer from a selected prefix. Distillation is applied only to prefixes that pass this verification. The authors report that experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning across ten languages and three model scales show TOPSD outperforming conventional OPSD, particularly in low- and medium-resource languages. Escape Meridian’s reading is that this approach makes the decision about where to teach part of the distillation process, rather than assuming that the teacher can use every student trajectory productively. The evidence provided here is the paper’s abstract; it does not give performance measurements or further experimental details. ## Original source arXiv cs.AI · Article Original source date: Nov 5, 2026 (2026-11-05). Date basis: Date basis not provided. Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-08T17:47:43.054Z. First observed: 2026-11-06T05:10:30.903Z. Retrieved: 2026-11-08T17:46:56.679Z. - [Knowing When to Teach: Learning from Teachable Prefixes in Multilingual Reasoning Distillation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Limits The supplied evidence is the paper’s abstract and does not provide performance measurements or further experimental details. The reported experiments concern multilingual mathematical reasoning; the supplied evidence does not report results on other reasoning tasks. The source page identifies the listed authors but provides no further context about their roles in the work. ## Open question Do TOPSD’s reported gains hold on reasoning tasks beyond multilingual mathematical reasoning? ## Source-stated The authors identify Teacher Drift: a teacher may follow a student's incorrect intermediate steps instead of correcting them. > as these mistakes accumulate, the teacher may follow the student's incorrect steps instead of correcting them. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source-stated The authors report that Teacher Drift tends to occur earlier in lower-resource languages. > this shift tends to occur earlier in lower-resource languages. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source-stated TOPSD estimates where drift begins using teacher-student likelihood, selects a prefix, and applies distillation only if the teacher can recover the correct answer from it. > It then verifies whether the teacher can recover the correct answer from that prefix, applying distillation only to prefixes that pass verification. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source-stated The authors report that TOPSD outperforms conventional OPSD in experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning, particularly in low- and medium-resource languages. > Experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning across ten languages and three model scales show that TOPSD consistently outperforms conventional OPSD, particularly in low- and medium-resource languages. - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Escape Meridian interpretation The abstract reports results for multilingual mathematical reasoning, leaving performance on other reasoning tasks unresolved in the supplied evidence. > Experiments on multilingual mathematical reasoning across ten languages and three model scales - [Supporting source](https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08179) ## Source and contributor context Cho, Jaewon, Yoon, Minseo, Park, Jinyoung, Seo, Jinwoo, Chu, Jaewon, Oh, Alice, Kim, Hyunwoo J. · Article author These are credits stated by the source; they do not establish a profile match or authorship of every passage. ## Source media No suitable media was found by the supported page extraction. ## Terms and references Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement. ## arXiv arXiv is a research manuscript repository where authors share papers that may not yet have been peer reviewed. - [Explore this context](/entities/arxiv) - [Reference](https://arxiv.org/) - [Reference](https://info.arxiv.org/help/api/index.html) ## Editorial provenance Version 1. Publication ID: 53617c76-8439-47db-82ca-17a80c50ffa2. Prepared by gpt-6-luna; grounding review by gpt-6-luna. Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-08T17:47:43.054Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true. Editorial selection: accept; reasons: material\_development. Observation: ae1e98bae53313b72d0a59071f9128c4ed56c6f8ae9cafb21f04062d7c9236c1. Source text hash: 21aa5edfd437b6f4f293ea56b30beffaa1e239a62729750b909e4e306cbf1d53. ### uncertain — 2026-11-08T17:47:43.054Z — anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 Publication: 53617c76-8439-47db-82ca-17a80c50ffa2 attribution — pass: The draft correctly credits the work to Jaewon Cho and coauthors, as listed on the arXiv page. It frames Teacher Drift, the lower-resource-language observation and TOPSD's results as the authors' own reports. > Authors:Jaewon Cho, Minseo Yoon, Jinyoung Park, Jinwoo Seo, Jaewon Chu, Alice Oh, Hyunwoo J. Kim summary — uncertain: The draft names OPSD but never says what it is. The source defines it as training a student on its own reasoning, with the same model acting as teacher when given reference solutions. Without that, a general reader cannot see why a teacher would follow the student's errors. Distillation, lower-resource languages, prefix and teacher-student likelihood also go unexplained. Smallest repair: add the source's one-line OPSD definition and plain glosses or term-library tooltips for these terms. The draft also drops the source's word consistently, which weakens the stated result. > training a student on its own reasoning, using the same model conditioned on reference solutions as a teacher date — pass: The originalPublished date of 2026-11-05 matches the v1 submission date on the arXiv page. It is not the later feed date of 2026-11-06. > \[Submitted on 5 Nov 2026\] support — pass: Each claim matches the abstract. The Escape Meridian interpretation is labeled and follows from TOPSD deciding where and whether to supervise. The limitations correctly note that the abstract gives no performance numbers. The question addresses a real gap: results are reported only for math. No benefits or costs are invented. > determines where and whether teacher supervision should be applied to each reasoning trajectory media — pass: The selected media is the verified direct link to the arXiv abstract page, which is the original source. ## Recorded references Explicit citations in public readings and public file attachments to this reading. Shared topics are not citations. Other artifact types need an explicit reference adapter. No public references recorded here yet. [Reference data (JSON)](/readings/1b80fd477a5dacc974f4fe818bb0a8c46455daee04fedbb18481cf615a6b5ab6/references.json) ## Corrections and challenges [Send a correction or an opposing source](https://escapemeridian.com/corrections/) [JSON record](https://escapemeridian.com/readings/knowing-when-to-teach-learning-from-teachable-prefixes-in-1b80fd47.json)