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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

#141

Post by notzuck »

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…

Sometimes disruptive kids need to be told they are capable and put with other people that are capable. Being told you're an idiot (lowest tier class) generally leads to a self fulfilling prophecy and that's a problem for society.

I was a trouble maker at school. In my final two years, my history teacher took a special interest in me for whatever reason. I now have a masters degree from Cambridge university. I was forced to study with the good kids (who actually tried to bully me ironically) but it worked out really well for me. I think a lot of disruptive boys can really benefit from a strong masculine teacher that forced them to see that there's a better way.

Also, there are some kids which are just going straight to jail. No idea how to deal with them.

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

#142

Post by bitwize »

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…

This is called tracking and it's how school was done before the late 80s or early 90s, at which point it was declared wrong and evil and quite possibly racist. Interesting that they brought it back as an "experiment" with good results. It can never be implemented as anything more than an experiment these days because of the risk that too many students Of Color would end up in the bottom tracks.

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

#143

Post by thatfrenchguy »

borski wrote: post #33
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…

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…

> 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

Can't we fix bullying in the first place ?

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

#144

Post by bane »

My school system was a mess when it came to their gifted and talented (GAT) program. In my case, I was identified as a candidate, subjected to an absolutely insane battery of cognitive, aptitude and other tests, and then pulled from class once a week to go to another school with other GAT kids. Once there I was put into a room and basically told to go do smart things with no other primer, driver, or material to work with. My own personal interests were ignored. I was told I was disappointing my sponsor teacher by my lack of output, with no particular set of expectations on what, exactly, I was supposed to be doing.

After a year of this I asked to be excused from the program and spent the next year in not a "normal" class, but a remedial class because the school had sacrificed their non-GAT classes to create academic space for the GAT kids. So basically you were either doing some kind of advanced literature analysis or you were being tested on how to spell such challenging words as "ball" and "dog". There were other elements of the GAT program that were similarly discouraging.

I couldn't get out of school fast enough and it was such a damaging experience that I didn't go back to university until years later.

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

#145

Post by barry-cotter »

borski wrote: post #67
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.

I agree with this 100%, but the issues are not intertwined. We need to fix how classes are taught in "low achieving schools," but that's really hard to do when teachers are paid so poorly. Teaching isn't a lucrative career, and thus those that would be great teachers don't generally go into it. It's a really complex and difficult problem that I don't know I have a solution for. I do know that getting rid of magnet sc…

> on average, public-school teachers receive total compensation that is roughly 50 percent higher than what they would receive in private-sector employment. While salaries are at appropriate levels, fringe benefits push teacher compensation far ahead of what private-sector workers enjoy. Consequently, recruiting more effective teachers for public schools will be much more difficult than simply raising salaries.

https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-as...

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

#146

Post by pmoriarty »

seamyb88 wrote: post #42
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…

Sounds like you have some real problems in your society for that bad experience at school. Surely if you're the gifted individual you claim you are, you'll want to change society rather than seclude yourself from it as much as you can get away with. The non-gifted kids, whatever the fuck that means, don't deserve to bullied/abused either.

"The hope to change the world is a childish illusion. You have to change yourself."

Marie-Louise Von Franz

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

#147

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #132
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"This is just how the world works" is not evidence. Since you seem unwilling to present any, I'm going to assume that you have none.

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

#148

Post by bcrosby95 »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #122
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.

Why do they need more help? The classes are already designed for them. The problem is that the smart kids are forced to be in them too.

He said he did bad because he was bullied. Smart people aren't the only ones that get bullied. If the problem is bullying you aren't fixing it by pulling someone out, the bullies will just target other people.

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

#149

Post by bradlys »

wott wrote: post #105
empath75 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they’d do better by taking the kids who understand the material and asking them to work with the kids who don’t. You learn as much by teaching as doing, if not more.

It is very difficult to explain something which was obvious to you. Often you would not know how to decompose it, and above all, you would not know the pain points the others encounter, and why those points are painful. Teaching is a trade, after all.

> It is very difficult to explain something which was obvious to you.

I think that's the point. Teaching the kids who are performing well on something on how to distill their knowledge to others.

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