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The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

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Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#31

Post by patio11 »

ksml wrote: post #19

Wow, 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.…

IMSA is indeed a great school. (I went to high school at another well-regarded school in Illinois, and saw quite a bit of IMSA folks deep into the statewide competitions for math team, quiz bowl, debate, etc etc.) I avoided going to it for exactly the reason you mentioned, with the worry that that would be exacerbated by social isolation caused by being away from my family.

I imagine many folks find it a wonderful place to be.

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#32

Post by runevault »

_gwlb wrote: post #26
aappleby wrote: post #9

See also "Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science" :)

These schools are all over the place! I graduated from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts. Math and science schools are truly fantastic places for advanced high school students to get a quality education.

I have to admit, I never expected to see my old HS come up on HN for some reason (though I'm still not used to the and the Arts, I went when it was still just the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences.

Ah, memories.

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#34

Post by bfung »

Going to troll a little. At my high school, IMSA was known as just as IA:

"The Math Team at Naperville North ...and won ten consecutive Math Team state championships (1998–2007). ... The WYSE team won the state championship from 1999 to 2005, 2007 to 2009, 2012, and 2013."[1]

=P

IMSA and other high schools in the area were pretty close, as you'd apply to IMSA after doing a year at the other high schools in the area.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naperville_North_High_School#A...

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#35

Post by evancordell »

wgman wrote: post #28
aappleby wrote: post #9

See also "Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science" :)

And my former highschool the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. I really can't say enough great things about the place.

I also went to lsmsa and had a great experience. Can't really say enough good things about it; it was such an amazing atmosphere compared to the public high school I attended before.

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#36

Post by nmrm2 »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #14
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #12

Earlier 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…

> I'd argue that we should be doing a lot less for the gifted. They'll turn out fine with guidance and resources.

There is a common perception that gifted students are "like other students, but smarter and better at school stuff".

This is a flawed perception; it's not at all uncommon for gifted students to do very poorly in school, and not just for social reasons.

Instead of thinking of "gifted" as "better", you should think of gifted as "special".

(FWIW, I agree with your criticism of your parent post and upvoted you -- gifted students aren't more important than any other student.)

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#37

Post by davelnewton »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #12
in_cahoots wrote: post #11

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.

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?

Yes, it is, and it's critical.

A relatively ignorant populace is societal cancer.

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#38

Post by acjohnson55 »

nmrm2 wrote: post #36
acjohnson55 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'd argue that we should be doing a lot less for the gifted. They'll turn out fine with guidance and resources. There is a common perception that gifted students are "like other students, but smarter and better at school stuff". This is a flawed perception; it's not at all uncommon for gifted students to do very poorly in school, and not just for social reasons. Instead of thinking of "gifted" as "better", you shou…

I 100% agree with you. I taught high school in Baltimore's public schools. Some of my brightest kids were some of my worst performing, most challenging students to deal with. I honestly believe some of them underperformed because they could perceive what a sham the system was.

But in my original comment, I was using "gifted" in the more traditional sense of "high performing" or "high testing", which doesn't necessarily correspond with brilliance. A big criticism I have of the gifted track is that it misses out on a lot of students who are capable of doing accelerated work.

Re: The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public live-in high school

#39

Post by acjohnson55 »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #16
acjohnson55 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 schools systems I have experience with do have gifted/normal/remdial tracks, and then various levels of special ed services. I agree that it's not enough. And especially so because there was never anything "remedial" about the remedial track. It was basically synonymous for permanently behind.

I taught math in Baltimore, and on the pretest I gave my students at the beginning of 9th grade, my students tested anywhere from 2nd grade to 9th grade in terms of current math skills, all bundled together in one room. On the low end of that scale, many students had been socially promoted to keep them with their age group.

What really gets me is that across the city, there are plenty of students who get delayed a year in their education, for a variety of reasons. Now we should be attacking those underlying issues, but that aside, it seems to me like we could much more proactive about getting those students truly focused remedial services, to either get them back on track or to at least maintain parallel pacing with their peers so that they get to the same endpoint, even if it's a year later.

We're rather fixated as a nation on the K-12 concept, rigidly linked with age, and with all subjects progressing in lockstep. I think we'd have much better outcomes with a more flexible system that recognize that a person's academic development doesn't scale so cleanly. I think even in a more flexible framework, we've got more than enough students to still take advantage of the economies of scale of systematic education.

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