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Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

hechingerreport.org

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Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#21

Post by daxorid »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #10

I have to say that this result is wildly different from my experience and that of my children. It's boring to sit in class redoing a simple math problem just because someone wants to detrack math. A friend of mine who is a teacher says that he has MORE discipline problems from the smart kids who aren't challenged enough. The real secret should be to embrace independent, computer-mediated systems like Khan Academy. Ev…

That's because, as per usual, they buried the lede.

First, they cherry-picked studies. Second, the few studies they referenced addressed overall school performance, not performance of the gifted students.

A perfectly valid way of reading this article is: gifted kids in de-tracked schools do the teachers' jobs for them by helping out the slower kids, which results in better school performance.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#22

Post by akhilcacharya »

gnicholas wrote: post #2

> after San Francisco Unified de-tracked math, the proportion of students failing algebra fell from 40 percent to 8 percent and the proportion of students taking advanced classes rose to a third, the highest percentage in district history. Until 10th grade, students take the same mathematics classes. From 11th grade on, students can choose different pathways. That doesn't seem like much time to choose different math…

> . For example, the "math kids" I grew up with took several classes post-calculus in high school. How can you do that if you're only taking calculus as a junior or possibly senior

What if taking more than Calculus 2 in High school isn’t necessary?

Your school seems incredibly privileged to me, imho.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#23

Post by catalogia »

daxorid wrote: post #21
xhkkffbf wrote: post #10

I have to say that this result is wildly different from my experience and that of my children. It's boring to sit in class redoing a simple math problem just because someone wants to detrack math. A friend of mine who is a teacher says that he has MORE discipline problems from the smart kids who aren't challenged enough. The real secret should be to embrace independent, computer-mediated systems like Khan Academy. Ev…

That's because, as per usual, they buried the lede. First, they cherry-picked studies. Second, the few studies they referenced addressed overall school performance , not performance of the gifted students. A perfectly valid way of reading this article is: gifted kids in de-tracked schools do the teachers' jobs for them by helping out the slower kids, which results in better school performance.

It may be the case that the gifted kids are helping slower kids score better, but not actually learn better. At least, that's what it was like when I was a kid. Teachers would constantly pair up smart kids with dumb kids for group assignments or study, and the smart kids would end up doing all the work. This benefits the teachers when they're evaluated by how well students are scoring.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#24

Post by nine_k »

I'd just hazard to say that the current school system is not very functional.

It puts kids through a lot of unpleasant experiences, requiring to exert a lot of effort and spend a lot of time. The problem is that not so much of that effort, discomfort, and time is due to learning new and useful stuff.

Instead, some kids waste time bored when they are ahead of the class, some waste time clueless when they are way behind the class. Quite some kids spend effort on fending off bullies, while other kids attain toxic experience of being successful bullies.

Most of the kids also have a very vague idea why are they studying particular stuff, hoping that maybe it will all fall in place when they go to college, or just hope to pass through it all and forget it after graduating.

Teaching children is what we, as a society, haven't yet figured out well enough.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#25

Post by akhilcacharya »

Bostonian wrote: post #5

The author is a professor at Stanford. If separating gifted children has no benefits, why doesn't Stanford admit students at random?

This is true. But I’d rather folks be open about the social engineering instead of pretending it doesn’t happen.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#26

Post by SpaceManNabs »

This article mostly talks about the bay area (and slightly mentions national studies), so it seems that they were mostly studying the case were most students were already meeting a sort of baseline.

From my personal experience, I think that separating kids in lower income areas leads to positive experiences. Before being in the gifted program, my classes were often interrupted by fights and stuff that was more fit on world star.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#28

Post by widowlark »

hackerrenews wrote: post #9

I was fourth picked for g&t. First and second pick ended up being quite successful, as did the third picked. One has a high up, prestigious position at Amazon and the other retired from Microsoft wealthy. Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even. Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids…

I hope all is well now, thanks for sharing.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#29

Post by gnicholas »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #22
gnicholas wrote: post #2

> after San Francisco Unified de-tracked math, the proportion of students failing algebra fell from 40 percent to 8 percent and the proportion of students taking advanced classes rose to a third, the highest percentage in district history. Until 10th grade, students take the same mathematics classes. From 11th grade on, students can choose different pathways. That doesn't seem like much time to choose different math…

> . For example, the "math kids" I grew up with took several classes post-calculus in high school. How can you do that if you're only taking calculus as a junior or possibly senior What if taking more than Calculus 2 in High school isn’t necessary? Your school seems incredibly privileged to me, imho.

Surely it isn't "necessary" to take more than Calc II. But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be good for some students to go further than that. The point is that in the setup described, no kids can take very advanced classes.

As far as privilege is concerned, it was a public IB school in Sacramento, and we had kids from all types of backgrounds. The average income (even in the IB program) was definitely lower than in other area high schools.

Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

#30

Post by pacaro »

In the final two years of secondary education — UK Sixth Form (college), roughly equivalent to US Junior and Senior years — I was in a selected math(s) class of just 12 students. Certainly the group of kids in the class all excelled academically at that point, and of that dozen many have gone on to be very successful (by a variety of metrics)

One point from TFA jumped out at me

— others shared that they’d learned they shouldn’t ask questions, as “gifted people are meant to know everything.”

I remember being astonished at this attitude at the time, that when the hardest problem sets were being worked through, consistently there was this sense that students were afraid to ask questions or make suggestions for fear of being wrong. The class kept moving because of a combination of no-nonsense teachers and a couple of students with a habit of blurting out the first thing that came to their head. Those students weren't often correct (I was occasionally one of them) but they definitely kept the class from stalling

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