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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?

#81

Post by habosa »

jawns wrote: post #3

Here in the U.S., very few public high schools have single-track education, at least not for "core" subjects such as English, math, and science. There are typically remedial, standard, honors, and AP classes for these subjects. And I would think that if you're OK with multi-track education, it would seem like having a separate school for gifted students is just an extension of that. That said, in my own experience, a…

> And I would think that if you're OK with multi-track education, it would seem like having a separate school for gifted students is just an extension of that.

I think this is a big leap. I went to a large public high school (~2500 students total) with 3 tracks for each subject. I was in the highest track the whole time, but I would not support physically segregating students like me into a separate school. There are a number of benefits to keeping people in the same school:

1. It's socially beneficial to have high school friends who are different than you are. Many of my best friends were not in my classes but we hung out at lunch time and in after school activities. I think we learned a lot of intangible things from each other.

2. Parental involvement. Parents of kids who are high achievers are more likely to want to see the school go in the right direction. Having involved parents keeps the whole school administration on their toes and brings the general standard of the school up for everyone. If the high achievers had their own school the other students would have fewer advocates.

When American schools were racially desegregated we saw gains across the board: https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomica...

While separating gifted students is not the same as separating by race, I think a lot of lessons can be learned from that previous experience.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#82

Post by habosa »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #49
shawabawa3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the question was what happens to the students who are not labeled as 'bright'? How does their being cast off to a "lower" school affect society in the long run.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#84

Post by _m8fo »

I'm shocked, yet paradoxically unsurprised that so many of the comments here are saying "yes" to the question.

In practice, separating gifted students does two things:

1. Accelerates income inequality (there's no way the gifted students on average will do poorer than the 'regular' students)

2. Remove equality of opportunity.

What exactly is a gifted school going to do that would help gifted students and not regular students?

- Small classes? Help regular students to extent.

- Better curriculum? Hey! Helps regular students.

- More practical education? Also helps regular students

---

I'm not against segregation in theory. However, in practice there's very little evidence that the gifted schools would NOT benefit regular students. If you believe that gifted students should receive more education than regular students, then that's an entirely separate discussion.

If you have evidence, I'd love to see it (I'm very interested in education, in particular).

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#85

Post by habosa »

A lot of comments here sound something like this: "I am smart and when I was in high school the classes bored me because they were taught to the lowest common denominator".

This is not an argument for intellectual segregation of schools. While I could put forth a hundred arguments against this, here are a few off the top of my head:

1. When do we decide who is "gifted"? What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever cast down into a track of lower opportunity? This will be highly correlated with race and socioeconomic status since we know that poor / minority communities don't have the best resources / results for early childhood development.

2. What about the social benefits of being around people who are on a different intellectual level? "Smart" kids who never have to interact with anyone "below" them or "dumb" kids who never have to interact with anyone "above" them will have trouble navigating many social and professional situations.

3. "Gifted" kids often come with motivated parents. Removing these children from schools will take their parents with them. These parents are often the best advocates for positive change in their community. The worst schools will never get better if all the talent is sucked out of them.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#86

Post by hawkice »

I can't imagine any policymaker would be reading this thread, but if so: YES, PLEASE, DEAR GOD YES.

When I was in normal schools (public and private) I stood out. I don't mean, I was precocious and didn't everyone notice how clever I was. I mean, I was bullied. By everyone. Including my teachers. My life was hell, every day getting worse. I was physically sick just thinking about going to school every morning.

Until I was in a Gifted and Talented program in 5th grade. The material wasn't challenging (this is NOT about getting challenging material), but I had a teacher that understood me and peers who didn't hate me.

Giving children a space where they're not constantly tortured is a good policy. As a now-productive member of society, there is no amount of my current success I would not ransom so that children now don't have to go through what I did. It's not something a civilized society should allow.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#87

Post by huffmsa »

Yes, unless the curriculum is set to meet their level of educational capacity.

Does trickle down education work? Would a middle quartile student benefit more from trying to keep up with the top quartile than they do for curriculum geared to them?

Would be an interesting experiment.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#88

Post by alistairSH »

Retra wrote: post #52
shawabawa3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would other schools suffer?

In the US, much of a school's extracurricular program is funded via PTA, fund-raising, or simply charging extra fees. In this system, the well-to-do parents/families subsidize the others (poor students granted waivers to the various fees, or don't contribute to the PTA monetarily).

Given the strong correlation between academic aptitude and economic success, removing the smart students also remove the wealthy students. The funding model falls apart, and the students who remain get even less extracurricular enrichment.

Granted, we could design programs that mostly avoid the problem. In my county, the gifted high school (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology) only takes absolutely brilliant students. Many of whom truly fit the "too smart to fit in" stereotype. Across a large county, that still leaves plenty of gifted/wealthy students in the normal schools, which offer a broad selection of AP/IB/dual-enrollment options.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#90

Post by justin_vanw »

Yea probably. There's no reason to hold them back or subject them to peer abuse, or condition them to hide their gift.

Very gifted students will start knowing more about what they are studying than the teacher between 3rd and 5th grades. They will be completely bored throughout high school if held back to the speed of even above average students. This teaches them that they can coast.

It's a huge disservice to our society that our smartest kids are hobbled and quite often exposed to abuse from peers, leading them to be isolated and preventing them from learning appropriate social skills. Certainly this isn't always what happens, but it very often is exactly what happens.

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