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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

#131

Post by ls612 »

marcusverus wrote: post #83
seamyb88 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have kids? Suppose you have two. One's into javascript and dungeons and dragons. The other's not great academically. No good at football either, and they still behave in a slightly awkward way. But great person, all the same. So, you condemn the latter child to the cesspit that is public life and protect the former? Or think up a better policy?

Allowing kid A the opportunity to move at an accelerated pace with other high achieving kids does not affect the opportunity afforded to kid B. Education is not a zero-sum game.

But social status is a zero sum game and that’s the dirty little secret of the people opposed to tracking. They can’t seem to improve their own kids’ lot so they hurt other kids’ opportunities instead.

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

#132

Post by jstewartmobile »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123
jstewartmobile wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"educational bureaucrats" includes "state bureaucracy". They're just pocket-lining middlemen. They have no agency. The final "paymasters" would be corporations, small businesses, and their PR agents in the non-profit sector. Examples: - textbooks--topics that haven't changed in centuries--better-covered by texts from generations ago. school system still buys sorry books at $100+ a pop because salesgirl wined-and-dine…

You show several examples of bureaucrats making decisions that other people make money off of. But you said "paymasters". Got any evidence of "pay"? Or just evidence of bad decisions and suspicion of pay? I grant you that, if you are correct, it would explain a lot. It would explain why we spend so much on education for so little result. But, as I asked, do you have evidence of pay? And "paymaster", to me, doesn't im…

Oh my sweet summer child! This is how the world works. Look at the governors, the congress, the president!

The disconnect is that you are approaching this as someone who is A) spending his own money, and B) not a dummy.

Soaking the taxpayer for "just" a few hundred thousand for a nice steak dinner happens all the time. They're state employees. It's not their money, and it's not like they're going to get fired for it.

edit: EVIDENCE. used to be married to a professor on textbook committee. textbook selection time is always a month of upscale dining. for higher-rent example, look at the epstein/ito/lessig saga at MIT. befriend sales guys at any big company, and they can give you examples from morning to midnight. open your eyes. it is hidden in plain sight.

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

#133

Post by cortesoft »

toasterlovin wrote: post #74
cortesoft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so it raises the question: What is the relative importance of helping the best students verse helping the worst students? Even if we solve the talent identification problem, SOME kids are going to be the lower achievers.... are we willing to sacrifice helping them do better to help the top achievers do their best? How much are we willing to sacrifice in either direction?

> are we willing to sacrifice helping them do better to help the top achievers do their best It's not clear to me that separating more talented kids into their own groups and classes hurts less talented kids. What is your thinking here?

Isn't that the entire conclusion of the article? That separating kids out hurts the average, meaning more kids are worse off than better?

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

#134

Post by empthought »

solveit wrote: post #120
koolba wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out the even smaller number of disrupters.

Yes, but how would that work in practice? Special schools for high performers is much more palatable than special schools for quarantining children who aren't going to amount to anything (no matter what you call it and how you design it, this is how it will be perceived).

If mandatory school attendance were repealed, it would work itself quite quickly.

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

#135

Post by sudosteph »

gct wrote: post #103
kick wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently not in a position to be able to look up this stuff (making dinner), but Duke has done a lot of research on this stuff under their TIP program that basically everyone in this thread might be interested in: it validates your experiences in numbers as the default for gifted children/adolescents/teenagers when not helped structurally, and provides a reasonable amount of information and resources to try and…

I was in TIP. Hanging out with smart, kind kids every summer was the highlight of my year. Lotta great memories. Public school...not so much.

The TIP programs looked fun, shame they were so pricey. I kept getting the invites, but neither me nor anyone I knew had parents who could throw down for it. I do recall doing an excellent forensic science daytime camp program with the law enforcement training program at the community college though. It was only a couple of days long, but the instructor was great and it was a totally unique experience. Making summer programs more accessible and interesting would probably be a great thing for kids of all ability levels to be honest.

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

#136

Post by why_only_15 »

gct wrote: post #103
kick wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently not in a position to be able to look up this stuff (making dinner), but Duke has done a lot of research on this stuff under their TIP program that basically everyone in this thread might be interested in: it validates your experiences in numbers as the default for gifted children/adolescents/teenagers when not helped structurally, and provides a reasonable amount of information and resources to try and…

I was in TIP. Hanging out with smart, kind kids every summer was the highlight of my year. Lotta great memories. Public school...not so much.

I was in TIP and CTY, and I would agree. That was always the best part of the year, and it provided a view into worlds I didn't know existed before. In fifth grade we studied recursion in math and all the kids there were smarter than me. The people were so much more interesting too. Life changing experiences.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

762236 wrote: post #36
borski wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen to this. I was separated (went to Stuyvesant HS in NYC) and it made a world of difference for me, as compared to JHS or elementary school. Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was very difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, just didn't give a fuck . It really sucked. Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the opportunity to actuall…

I had a similar experience. It was wonderful to be put into a magnet school filled with kids that were smart and generally wanted to learn (every one of them went to a college/university), and to be separated from the kids that hated school. That is the sad thing: so many of the kids causing problems in the normal schools wouldn't cause problems if they attended schools that focused on their vitalities in the way tha…

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by rayiner »

koolba wrote: post #112
borski wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen to this. I was separated (went to Stuyvesant HS in NYC) and it made a world of difference for me, as compared to JHS or elementary school. Prior to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was very difficult to try and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, just didn't give a fuck . It really sucked. Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the opportunity to actuall…

The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out the even smaller number of disrupters.

This is 95% of why we send our kids to private school. In the rare case a disrupter makes it in, they're "counseled out." It's a travesty that schools permit a handful of bad apples to ruin the learning experience of everyone else.

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

#139

Post by ChristianBundy »

barry-cotter wrote: post #121
koolba wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out the even smaller number of disrupters.

That’s illegal. https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/public-sch... > Wonder what allows a school to at least consider permanent expulsion? The student has to be convicted of: > murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon > But expulsion can be permanent if and only if he or she is over 16 or older. And of course, forget all those criteria for the disability manifestation exc…

> murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon

Without punctuation, this sounds like a ridiculously specific and esoteric crime.

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

#140

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

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.

Honestly... I don’t care much. My school was low on bullying. Nothing torturous like others experience. Most of the gen pop students were pretty rude and dumb. And most of them have lower middle class business jobs that suck ass but put food on the table. And none of their education mattered except for rubber stamping milestones. “Deserves help” doesn’t make sense to me. Their life choices are going to be the determinants of whether they hit a moderate outcome vs an incredibly shitty outcome. Their education isn’t useful.

If you want to help them, find a way to improve society that’s overburdened with unskilled workers with middle class aspirations. The gen pop group doesn’t disappear when high school ends. It’s still just the majority of people, just perhaps less socially empowered than in high school. We didn’t fail to make them love science, they just don't care about science. It would be far better to recognize that they would be just fine with less education, no college debt, and some encouragement to make a better society for everyone.

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