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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?

#171

Post by lend000 »

timemachiner wrote: post #166
zeteo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever cast down into a track of lower opportunity? It's a good point, but it only argues for easy transfers into / out of the "gifted" track. > What about the social benefits of being around people who are on a different intellectual level? Only a good point if it comes from someone willing to live up to it. Would you willingly relocate to rural Kansas or inner Detroit for…

You ignore the fact most "gifted" students come from higher income families. There are "gifted" children from lower income families that would be misidentified due to underexposure of educational resources.

High income families already send their children to "smart" private schools; why not allow gifted children on the public school track to enjoy similar opportunities?

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#172

Post by wbl »

timemachiner wrote: post #166
zeteo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens to late bloomers? Are they forever cast down into a track of lower opportunity? It's a good point, but it only argues for easy transfers into / out of the "gifted" track. > What about the social benefits of being around people who are on a different intellectual level? Only a good point if it comes from someone willing to live up to it. Would you willingly relocate to rural Kansas or inner Detroit for…

You ignore the fact most "gifted" students come from higher income families. There are "gifted" children from lower income families that would be misidentified due to underexposure of educational resources.

Easy solution: universal screening with objective measures, instead of relying on identification by bussed teachers.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#173

Post by stale2002 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #108
brightball wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described why so many people support school choice and voucher policies. It is absolutely mind boggling to me how anyone can consider more options to be worse than a one size fits all model. EDIT: In keeping with the trend, took about 30 seconds to get downvoted.

> It is absolutely mind boggling to me how anyone can consider more options to be worse than a one size fits all model. It's pretty simple, really: you're looking from your own, self-centered perspective. From the point of view of the society , it may be desirable to restrict options available to individuals in order to mitigate negative effects of everyone making self-interested choices. Whether or not options shoul…

How is "getting a good education" a negative effect? It is the opposite. If smart people do the things they need to do to become even smarter, everyone benefits.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#174

Post by Pulcinella »

chrisabrams wrote: post #72
shiftpgdn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that I had very nearly the same experience in Texas. I had even been moved into a "Gifted and Talented" program which segregated us from the regular kids. While we did occasionally get to do something above and beyond the vast majority of the time was spent in a prison like setting where all we did was focus on standardized testing. I remember literally spending weeks of schooling in primary school learning how…

Oh the TAAS...I spent 10 years being told I would finish that crap in the 10th grade...only to find out in the 10th grade that TAAS II was coming out and we were the lucky candidates to take it...in the 11th grade. The #2 pencil is spot on. I carried an entire box of pencils and would trade them for a slice of pizza at lunch.

heh TAAS.

For those not from Texas or too young to have experienced it, TAAS was horrible even compared to other standardized tests.

Other standardized tests at least pretend to assess a student's learning. TAAS assessed a students ability to parse octuple negatives and poorly typeset mathematics.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#175

Post by magicalist »

Afton wrote: post #169
magicalist wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a good point, but it only argues for easy transfers into / out of the "gifted" track. The problem is if they've missed the first eight years of the gifted track, they can't just transfer in and be expected to know what's going on.

"gifted track" is rarely a set program. It's usually a mechanism for providing individually paced opportunities and resources [edit: added this phrase] _at a different/specific school_. Where I live, you get tested whenever your parents want you to be tested, and if they pass the advanced learning at the point, they can choose to elect for the 'advanced school(s)'. _edited for clarity_

> "gifted track" is rarely a set program. It's usually a mechanism for providing individually paced opportunities and resources.

...which doesn't apply when the "track" is a set program at a different school.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#176

Post by timemachiner »

wbl wrote: post #172
timemachiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignore the fact most "gifted" students come from higher income families. There are "gifted" children from lower income families that would be misidentified due to underexposure of educational resources.

Easy solution: universal screening with objective measures, instead of relying on identification by bussed teachers.

You missed the part where I said they are underexposed to educational resources. These "objective measures" would be biased against low income students that aren't taught the material.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#177

Post by grillvogel »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #100
Aqueous wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. This idea that education is only for my own individual welfare has to end. It's creating a culture of individual atomism that is instilling the most anti-social, selfish values and corroding the country at its roots. We go to school not just to be educated but to educate each other. If you're smart, you set an example to kids near us who don't feel that way. Hopefully, those who aren't labelled 'smart' gain from t…

Have you ever been inside a school? The stupid kids don't gather around to bask in the glow of the gifted kids. They DO gather around them and call them 'faggot' and trip them in the hallway, especially if they are smart but not athletic.

stereotypes work both ways

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#178

Post by TeMPOraL »

zepto wrote: post #131
TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is absolutely mind boggling to me how anyone can consider more options to be worse than a one size fits all model. It's pretty simple, really: you're looking from your own, self-centered perspective. From the point of view of the society , it may be desirable to restrict options available to individuals in order to mitigate negative effects of everyone making self-interested choices. Whether or not options shoul…

This makes no sense - you are proposing restricting the options of high performers so that they don't make self interested choices. Why not restrict the choices of low performers instead?

Because with this definition of the problem, the "low performers" don't have options to restrict.

My point, as applied to this case, is that giving the option of "smart-only schools" will predictably lead to people taking it, which may lead to issues described by 'habosa here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483591. It's a reasonable question to ask if this is what is beneficial to the society (including its economy), and if the answer is no, then not giving such an option in a first place is an entirely logical approach.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#179

Post by automorphism »

_m8fo wrote: post #84

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 s…

1. Gifted children come from the rich and poor and from all ethnicities. The way to reduce income inequality is to take the brightest students from across these diverse groups and help them achieve their potential.

2. The alternative is equality of outcome, i.e. cut down the tall poppies. This isn't a solution. Keeping gifted children lockstep with their age-mates does them serious damage that can last a lifetime.

Regular students cannot benefit from compacting the K-5 curriculum into two or three years, whereas the gifted can. The reality is that these kids need to be surrounded by their ability peers if they are going to reach their potential.

For evidence, check out the work of Miraca Gross, who did her work in Australia. She has a book called Exceptionally Gifted Children, where she details the lives of several of these kids and shows how devastating the school system can be to them if extra accommodations are not made.

Re: Should gifted students go to a separate school?

#180

Post by reflexive »

habosa wrote: post #85

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…

> The worst schools will never get better if all the talent is sucked out of them.

You're already lost if you're relying on the worst schools to get better. We only need a tiny fraction of the population (1% or less) to be the leaders of the next generation. Focusing on improvements within that group is likely to have far greater impact on society than trying to move the "bottom" group to the "next group up from the bottom".

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