Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by dcbadacd » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

kick wrote: post #57

dcbadacd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sage-on-a-stage also comes with socializing both during and after lessons, that can't be replaced with computers. If anything, I think it'd cause a lot more sadness than the current system.

Socializing generally isn't productive for gifted children past a certain point; when they're too far ahead of their peers, there's not much value that comes from it.

Somewhat. If the gifted kids can socialize among themselves then that certainly is more beneficial. In theory it'd be nice to only interact with people like oneself but I don't see that happening, learning how to interact with others is definitely not useless but indeed depends on the amount. Not sure I'd measure usefulness with some productivity metrics, that success = productive kid at that point in time, social skills are hard to measure like that.

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

#92

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

jstewartmobile wrote: post #88

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the time. Define "ordinary". Also state why you think that's a relevant question.

"Ordinary" being the typical sort of public school most children in your city/county/etc would go to. A school that pre-selects students based on race, wealth, test scores, etc would not count as ordinary for obvious reasons. If what I wrote was drivel, it should be very easy to refute. Just labeling it as drivel seems like a cop-out--driven more by ideology than first-hand experience.

By your definition, yes, I went to an ordinary school.

My personal experience is against your position, for what it's worth.

>>> Their paymasters want high-value cogs.

> If what I wrote was drivel, it should be very easy to refute.

You made the claim. You have the burden of proof. Show that either the educational bureaucrats have a "paymaster" that is different from the state bureaucracy, or that the higher-ups in the state bureaucracy want "high-value cogs".

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

#93

Post by borski » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

underpand wrote: post #70

cortesoft wrote: post #60

How do we help those kids that are in 'gen pop', though? Simply pulling the smarter kids out, helping them, and ignoring the rest doesn't seem like a good answer, either. I feel like HN is not the best place for this sort of discussion, since everyone is coming at the problem from the perspective of the high achiever. The low achievers deserve help, too.

The bottom 10-20% (larger in 'inner city' schools) of people with behavioral issues will always ruin it for everyone else. Behavioral issues negatively correlates with intelligence and effort in school (by both the parents and the students). Increased tracking (i.e. separate low achieving and regular achieving) can be used to 'rescue' the majority of students that are average from having their education disrupted fro…

Be careful how you define 'behavioral issues.' I think I know what you mean, but you should more carefully define it; I had plenty of behavioral issues. In fact, I was constantly in trouble for talking too much, not paying attention, being loud, etc. I was bored af.

But I wasn't doing drugs or fighting (minus the one or two times), so there's that.

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

#94

Post by kick » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

dcbadacd wrote: post #91

kick wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socializing generally isn't productive for gifted children past a certain point; when they're too far ahead of their peers, there's not much value that comes from it.

Somewhat. If the gifted kids can socialize among themselves then that certainly is more beneficial. In theory it'd be nice to only interact with people like oneself but I don't see that happening, learning how to interact with others is definitely not useless but indeed depends on the amount. Not sure I'd measure usefulness with some productivity metrics, that success = productive kid at that point in time, social sk…

Children aren't really the "others" of the adult world; they aren't fully grown enough, generally, to be of interest. Were the child or adolescent interacting with non-gifted adults, it would make sense. Not so much children.

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

#95

Post by marcusverus » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #64

mancerayder wrote: post #49

This difference between tracked and untracked math experiences was illuminated recently in a survey we gave to San Francisco ninth-graders and ninth-graders across another large district, where all students are in tracked groups. The San Francisco students were significantly more positive about both mathematics and their own potential. Importantly, the San Francisco students were also significantly more likely than s…

Earlier in the article it addressed some achievement metrics for the same district: >For instance, 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, s…

He is referring to cultural postmodernism, which is a worldview in which objective truth is not to be preferred to the perceived / experienced understanding (i.e. opinion) as to the truth. Especially when considering the socially or economically disadvantaged.

So while an adherent to a purely rational worldview might ask, "what the hell do feelings have to do with measuring academic performance?", a postmodernist would be glad to, say, include data about feelings (i.e. opinions) in an article and try to pass them off as evidence alongside hard, objective data, as though someone's feelings about grades and the grades themselves are both legitimate data from which to make decisions or design policy.

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

#96

Post by shantly » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #47

When I was in middle school in the 90s, I think around 7th grade (~12yo), the school district experimented with a new way of organizing the student body where they separated us into six distinct, equally sized cohorts based on some evaluation of each student's performance and capability. From what I could tell it was rougly: 1. Gifted / clearly university-bound 2. Potential college prep 3. Community college 4. Normal…

I truly don't know how to significantly improve the school experience for most kids short of just kicking out (or isolating) the bottom few percent, in terms of disruptiveness, violence, and GAF-ness, certainly by 6th or 7th grade, if not earlier. Which seems like a shitty solution and is legally untenable for a bunch of reasons I'm sure, but they're responsible for a large part of why school sucks so much and is so unproductive for everyone else. Any why teaching is so stressful and (at times, some places more than others) feels unrewarding.

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

#97

Post by underpand » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

The SF algebra change is NOT a success. Most of the stats are cherrypicked and misleading.

> For instance, 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.

This compares the number of 8th graders who failed Algebra 1 before the change to the number of 9th graders who failed Algebra 1 after the change. These are apples to oranges numbers. The appropriate metric is the percent of 9th graders that have passed Algebra 1 in either 8th or 9th grade before and after the change.

The following is arguably the most important metric that is omitted. From another article:

> While more students are taking precalculus now, the enrollment in Advanced Placement calculus courses has declined by nearly 13 percent over the past two years.

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

#98

Post by lutorm » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

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…

A good teacher doesn't let you redo the same simple math problems. Mine didn't.

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

#99

Post by zaroth » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #86

marcusverus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is advocating for 'ignoring the rest'. The point is to prevent 'the rest' from setting the pace of development for everyone. You can't optimize educational outcomes for the full spectrum of human beings, from the no-effort types with an IQ of 85, to motivated types with IQs of 115+, in a single classroom with a single curriculum. It just does not make sense. If anything, separating high, medium,…

Your assumption here is in exact opposition to the article. Unless you can successfully argue that the numbers in the article are wrong, it appears that what seems like a preferable situation is, in fact, not.

The article seems to dance around some carefully crafted statistics. Students are “happier,” or more kids are taking classes which are labeled as advanced. I see very little in the form of college admissions rates, SAT scores, etc.

It’s also possible that tracking does in fact lower the average performance while increasing the high end performance.

One things which would help regardless is for Administrators which permit students to perpetuate bullying and abuse within the student body to be sued out of a job if not charged criminally. The shit we put up with kids doing to kids luckily seems to be changing fairly radically, and that does obviously help you tune down some of the tracking which in the past served as much a behavior as it did a pedagogical purpose.

I will say that my 5th grade daughter basically has stopped being taught new material for the last year (2nd half of 4th and first half of 5th) while the whole the class seems to be stuck in perpetual review mode. She complains that the teacher will rarely offer something new, and she doesn’t understand why everyone else in the class can’t just listen the first time it’s explained, and why the teacher spends the rest of the week basically repeating themselves.

I’m paranoid of teaching her independently and just making her even more bored. Tracking doesn’t start in my district until 6th grade and we are both very much looking forward to it.

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

#100

Post by Pmop » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

Wouldn't say about gifted children and achievement but even then, I'd like to be separated just for the sake of having someone I could share one idea or two. Spent most of my childhood lonesome and not because 'antisocial' like I was led to believe but because the people I'd like to be hanging out with was spread out, just like was, spending their days lone (or worse), just like I did. I snapped out of this unlucky situation after I got into the university. This could be achieved back then by doing just what happened now: putting me and the other people like, together.