IMSA sounds like a great school, and I've always been a bit jealous of the alumnus I've met from there. But I don't know how much we can learn from this model. If you take 650 of the brightest and most motivated students and put them in one place, you're going to get incredible results regardless of the teaching methods. The real challenge is achieiving comparable gains with average or below-average students.
The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
11–20 of 39 posts
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#12IMSA sounds like a great school, and I've always been a bit jealous of the alumnus I've met from there. But I don't know how much we can learn from this model. If you take 650 of the brightest and most motivated students and put them in one place, you're going to get incredible results regardless of the teaching methods. The real challenge is achieiving comparable gains with average or below-average students.
That's an interesting question. Is it even worth the effort to try to achieve academic gains in below-average students? What's the typical improvement we should expect there? For that matter, do special schools like IMSA achieve any gains in their students, or do they merely select and observe them?
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#13The reason you see so many entrepreneurs come out of IMSA is that the students realize they can learn anything. You see the guy across from you ace a test or finish an assignment faster than you thought was possible. You know you are as good as your peers so you push yourself to reach that level.
Once you accomplish everything the school gives you, you want more. You think of new ideas and no longer constrain yourself to what is given to you. This is just one dynamic that happens here. A lot happens when you tell the most driven and brightest to "advance the human condition".
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#14IMSA sounds like a great school, and I've always been a bit jealous of the alumnus I've met from there. But I don't know how much we can learn from this model. If you take 650 of the brightest and most motivated students and put them in one place, you're going to get incredible results regardless of the teaching methods. The real challenge is achieiving comparable gains with average or below-average students.
That's an interesting question. Is it even worth the effort to try to achieve academic gains in below-average students? What's the typical improvement we should expect there? For that matter, do special schools like IMSA achieve any gains in their students, or do they merely select and observe them?
I'd flip that question around: can we afford not to?
The consequences of a failing education system are underemployment, unemployment, antisocial behavior, civil unrest, and criminal activity. Even worse, the impact is felt across generations, as children born to parents the system has failed get less enrichment at home than children born to well-educated parents. Case in point, the US's massive educational achievement gap and world-leading incarceration rate.
The word meritocracy was coined [1] to describe a system where resources are lavished on those who have proven their worth. Like the originator of the term, I severely doubt our ability to actually measure intellect/merit/achievement decoupled from unearned advantage and luck.
I'd argue that we should be doing a lot less for the gifted. They'll turn out fine with guidance and resources. If we actually invested the time and resources into the most at risk, we might actually be able to get them up to speed, rather than socially promoting them and kicking them from school to school. Furthermore, I'd posit that an education should be considered a human right, and a bar by which we measure our achievement as a country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#15Great school! I grew up about a 20 minute drive from there, and know a number of alums, including one of my best friends. They tend to be very ambitious, independent, and resourceful people. It's probably not a scalable model, without retooling the pipeline that feeds high school. Most American students aren't trained for the level of independence the school offers at a relatively young age. Heck, most American students aren't prepared for that level of independence by the time they hit university age.
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an interesting question. Is it even worth the effort to try to achieve academic gains in below-average students? What's the typical improvement we should expect there? For that matter, do special schools like IMSA achieve any gains in their students, or do they merely select and observe them?
I'd flip that question around: can we afford not to? The consequences of a failing education system are underemployment, unemployment, antisocial behavior, civil unrest, and criminal activity. Even worse, the impact is felt across generations, as children born to parents the system has failed get less enrichment at home than children born to well-educated parents. Case in point, the US's massive educational achieveme…
That's sort of what I'm getting at. Perhaps the answer is to sort the students out into many more strata, instead of just the two we have, which are currently gifted programs and everybody else, including the basket cases. One of the biggest advantages of a selective school is no time is spent on classroom discipline. But we only have that for 1% of the students, while the other 4% of the top 5% are sitting around in the same class as the bottom 5% kids.
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose they mean "a boarding school." Actually, they repeatedly call it a "live-in school." Is there a difference between a live-in school and a boarding school?
Most IMSA kids I knew went home to their parents on the weekends, every weekend. Most boarding school kids I knew only went 'home' for summer, winter holidays, spring break, etc.
This certainly isn't universal. I graduated from IMSA and many (likely the majority of) kids stayed on most weekends, including myself
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#18See also "Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science" :)
i am thankful for the opportunity to attend TAMS :)
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#19Wow, my high school is on HN!
IMSA was an amazing place. There are so many smart people with so much motivation and it feels like anything is possible there. There is a dark side, though, not often mentioned publicly. Mental health issues are quite common, as could be expected when you put 14-18 year olds in a highly stressful, high-pressure environment, and people generally aren't very physically healthy, either (4.5 hours of sleep a night is common). I had some of my best times and worst times at IMSA.
Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school
#20The reason you see so many entrepreneurs come out of IMSA is that the students realize they can learn anything. You see the guy across from you ace a test or finish an assignment faster than you thought was possible. You know you are as good as your peers so you push yourself to reach that level. Once you accomplish everything the school gives you, you want more. You think of new ideas and no longer constrain yoursel…
This is something that I'm uniquely qualified to comment on.
I am an IMSA alum who was by and large, a below average IMSA student during my first two years. However, I learned a lot just by being exposed to my very smart classmates. Eventually, in my senior year I matured and started to work harder and got good grades. Had I stayed at my original high school I would have skated through at the top of my classes without much adversity. Then, based on the average college dropout rate of students from my original high school, I would have faced adversity in college and not know what to do. IMSA is a big part of why I am where I am today.