Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

hechingerreport.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 389 posts

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

#151

Post by liability »

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.

You can help the top 90% by keeping the bottom 10% away from them. And similarly, you can probably help that bottom 10% by removing the bottom 1% (the bottom 10% of the bottom 10%) from their environment.

You can probably get good milage out of recursing this up until the point you're dealing with fractional people.

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

#152

Post by jstewartmobile »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #130
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…

>religion--the motive behind most western art and history, be it protagonist or antagonist. can't talk about it though--massive black hole in any sort of humanities education. Went to a public school in California. We learned plenty about religion, of all kinds. We even read parts of the Bible during literature class. Perhaps you should re-examine your assumptions.

Which did they spend more time on: Christianity or Shakespeare? Judaism or Judy Blume?

We got an excerpt from Ecclesiastes, and snippets about whatever "The Church" was up to in different periods of European history. A very low bar.

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

#153

Post by nitrogen »

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…

Everyone advocating for forced abolition of private schools and high-wealth public districts needs to read this thread. Hits too close to home.

Bullying and peer pressure cause serious harm, not just emotionally but economically when good kids drop out of society. These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.

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

#154

Post by nitrogen »

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).

Both exist. There are "last chance" public schools in some areas for those expelled from the main schools, in addition to charter and private schools for the higher achievers.

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

#155

Post by Supermancho »

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…

> That's illigal.

That is irrelevant.

This is done, to some extent, via auxillary schools in many affluent areas. If a student is problematic in any myriad of ways, off they are sent to the school with lower standards (often within sight of the other campus). For example, 1994 presidential blue ribbon Brea HS has the Canyon high school meters from its campus, specifically for this purpose.

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

#156

Post by sokoloff »

faizshah wrote: post #125
Kaveren wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the best students should never be weighed down to benefit the lower performers. the top percentile people in essentially any pursuit are responsible for a disproportionately large impact. it is far more important for the top performers to achieve their potential than for the middle to do slightly better.

At any school in the system the top performers would be in advanced classes and receiving the top education at that school. We are talking about public schools, everyone pays taxes for these schools not just the families of the top performers. Therefore, every student should have access to the AP classes and resources that are centralized within magnet schools.

Why? Why should a student who isn’t (or probably shouldn’t be) college-bound have theoretical (or actual) access to an AP course?

I was barred from taking our Vocational-Technical courses (auto repair, auto body, advanced shop, etc) because they weren’t offered to G&T kids. That also seems fine to me. Not every human is well suited for every endeavor.

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

#157

Post by barry-cotter »

cortesoft wrote: post #62
ZhuanXia wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>.... 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? It is so strange reading this comment, as I know how Americans are primed to respond to it, and how precisely opposite my response is.

Care to share what your response is? I am not sure I know what the traditional American response is?

Look at how the US K-12 education system works in practice. This is probably a reasonable enough guide to what the populace want because of democracy. You see a system designed and run for the pretty average children with substantial investment in bringing up those who are academically behind, whether or not there’s any prospect of them becoming average or exceeding it. You see basically nothing spent on the most academically gifted, as such. If they’re lucky there’ll be streaming with honours or AP classes.

Special needs gets about 25% of K-12 education spending. Gifted and talented hovers around 1%.

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

#158

Post by dragonwriter »

nitrogen wrote: post #153
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…

Everyone advocating for forced abolition of private schools and high-wealth public districts needs to read this thread. Hits too close to home. Bullying and peer pressure cause serious harm, not just emotionally but economically when good kids drop out of society. These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.

> Bullying and peer pressure cause serious harm, not just emotionally but economically when good kids drop out of society. These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.

That's perhaps a good argument for having smaller free-and-equally-funded public schools with more within any given radius of every residence, with policies that leverage that to provide greater permitted and practical choice for students/parents independent of wealth, but unless freedom from bullying and peer pressure is desired to be gated by wealth I don't see how it opposes, in any way, abolition of either private schools or public districts with superior funding because the local residents are richer.

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

#159

Post by pstuart »

leetcrew wrote: post #129
shantly wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think there's an argument to be made that the disruptive kids need special attention just as much as the gifted students, albeit of a different kind. they don't seem to benefit from the standard "just pretend they're learning" approach.

Sure, get them the attention they need. Just don't make the rest of the class pay for it.

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

#160

Post by nitrogen »

borski wrote: post #93
underpand wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also need to be careful not to lump the bully and the victim into the same category of "fighting". Both need different interventions.
Post reply on HN