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Should gifted students go to a separate school?

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Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#41

Post by jonathankoren »

lallysingh wrote: post #38
arethuza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very humble comprehensive I went to in Scotland addressed this issue with streaming - which seemed to work pretty well. Is streaming out of fashion in state schools these days? I know its alive and well in public schools as my son was streamed. Edit: For those outside the UK: public schools are a type of private school.

What's streaming?

Tracking.

You break kids up by test score and then put all the top kids together, all the middle kids together, and all the bottom kids together. My public school experimented with it for one year, but reverted. Rumor was, parents felt like their kids were being written off in the 6th grade.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#42

Post by [deleted] »

lallysingh wrote: post #38
arethuza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very humble comprehensive I went to in Scotland addressed this issue with streaming - which seemed to work pretty well. Is streaming out of fashion in state schools these days? I know its alive and well in public schools as my son was streamed. Edit: For those outside the UK: public schools are a type of private school.

What's streaming?

[deleted]

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#43

Post by maverick_iceman »

arethuza wrote: post #29
dijit wrote: post #2

Absolutely. I'm going to sound very self-centered and certainly not humble but when I was enrolled in mandatory education I was doing so under Tony Blair's Labour government. This government was elected under premises such as nationalisation and additionally "Education, Education, Education"[0]. As such no child was allowed to fail school. This had the opposite affect in my primary school, instead of segregating the…

The very humble comprehensive I went to in Scotland addressed this issue with streaming - which seemed to work pretty well. Is streaming out of fashion in state schools these days? I know its alive and well in public schools as my son was streamed. Edit: For those outside the UK: public schools are a type of private school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education)

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#44

Post by T-hawk »

lallysingh wrote: post #38
arethuza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very humble comprehensive I went to in Scotland addressed this issue with streaming - which seemed to work pretty well. Is streaming out of fashion in state schools these days? I know its alive and well in public schools as my son was streamed. Edit: For those outside the UK: public schools are a type of private school.

What's streaming?

Dividing students by ability, into groups such as honors/regular/remedial, with different levels of challenge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education)

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#45

Post by akhilcacharya »

steverb wrote: post #30
germinalphrase wrote: post #16

Alternatively, why not just allow advanced students to graduate and start college/career early, if they so desire. I know this happens in exceptional cases, but why force a kid to just load up with AP classes (which may - but probably do not - match college level rigor) rather than simply taking college courses? If they're past what high school can offer then let them finish and leave. We keep far too many students i…

This is currently the approach used by my daughter's school (and a lot of others in Tennessee), dual enrollment. She has some high school classes and takes a few others at the local community college. Next year she will be a senior and have one morning class at her high school, and the rest will be college. She should finish her Associate's (2 year) degree two semesters after graduating high school. Some more academi…

>Some more academically gifted students have managed to graduate high school and finish their two year degree simultaneously

I did that, it's not as useful as it seems.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#46

Post by jmkni »

dijit wrote: post #2

Absolutely. I'm going to sound very self-centered and certainly not humble but when I was enrolled in mandatory education I was doing so under Tony Blair's Labour government. This government was elected under premises such as nationalisation and additionally "Education, Education, Education"[0]. As such no child was allowed to fail school. This had the opposite affect in my primary school, instead of segregating the…

We still have Grammar Schools in Northern Ireland.

I definitely believe that they work, it's a shame they don't have them in England.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#48

Post by dagw »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #39
dagw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to the problem you describe is different classes for students of different abilities, not different schools. The school I went to (in England) split most classes into 4 sets where the 'best' student's in each subject went to set 1 and the ones that need extra help went to set 3 or 4. Then there where extra-curricular 'clubs' in certain subjects for students that wanted to go even deeper than the lessons…

In my experiences abilities in different subjects are highly correlated. So someone who is very good in science/math is unlikely to be completely dumb when it comes to history/language. So your proposal would actually give rise to (intellectually) segregated schools in all but name. So we might as well make it formal.

So your proposal would actually give rise to (intellectually) segregated schools in all but name

I didn't find that at all. There is more to school than classes, and we did have a bunch of classes that weren't segregated by ability (history, geography, religious studies, shop classes, sometimes PE, etc.) Plus we had lunch and all breaks together. My friends where absolutely not all in the same math set as me.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#49

Post by maverick_iceman »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #26
iplaw wrote: post #7

Yes. Without a single doubt. I attended the long-running #1 public school in the nation. The School for the Talented and Gifted Magnet High School in Dallas, TX. The environment fostered creativity and learning. There were no distractions or negative pressures or stressors. Being smart didn't result in being bullied, it resulted in being respected.

I think there's no doubt that it's a good thing for the students that go to these schools. The question is whether it's good for society as other schools may suffer

How is it bad for society for bright students to excel?

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#50

Post by discreditable »

jmduke wrote: post #11

I know this article is Australia-centric, but most US schools, to my knowledge, have multi-track educational programs (gifted students can take more advanced courses, take Honors/IB/AP, etc. etc.) which have separate curricula and teachers. In this respect, they're already in a separate program: having them go to a separate school entirely just hurts socialization between groups of students, which is more important f…

Even among the tracked schools there is sometimes a problem with gifted students being held back by the rest. I had to transfer to a public school for 7th & 8th grade (ages 12-13). They were so behind it was unreal.

After learning basic fractions for 4 years in the public school system, a friend and I made a chess set out of paper scraps. Our typical day involved doing the day's classwork and homework in an hour while the teacher lectured and then playing chess for the rest of the day. We played chess for several months until near the end of the year when a substitute confiscated our set and threw it away.

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