OGLS-SD: On-Policy Self-Distillation with Outcome-Guided Logit Steering for LLM Reasoning

Computer Science > Machine Learning [Submitted on 12 May 2026 (v1), last revised 29 May 2026 (this version, v2)] Title:OGLS-SD: On-Policy Self-Distillation with Outcome-Guided Logit Steering for LLM Reasoning View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:We study on-policy self-distillation (OPSD), where a language model improves its reasoning ability by distilling privileged teacher distributions along its own on-policy trajectories. Despite its promise, OPSD can suffer from training instability due to a pattern mismatch between teacher and student responses. Self-reflected teacher responses may introduce reflection-induced biases and response templates that miscalibrate token-level supervision, ultimately harming the student's reasoning ability. To mitigate this issue, we propose OGLS-SD, an outcome-guided logit-steering framework that leverages verifiable outcome rewards to calibrate privileged teacher logits. Specifically, OGLS-SD contrasts teacher logits induced by successful and failed on-policy trajectories, constructing an outcome-discriminative steering direction for token-level guidance. Experiments on mathematical reasoning benchmarks show that OGLS-SD stabilizes self-distillation and improves performance over standard OPSD and other variants. Submission history From: Weitong Zhang [view email][v1] Tue, 12 May 2026 17:00:53 UTC (715 KB) [v2] Fri, 29 May 2026 21:49:52 UTC (1,207 KB) References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?) arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.