Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement

I find it difficult to believe in a sudden shift in the student worldview from a relatively minor change. I'd tend to assume any effect was a shiff in classroom norms.

We all tend to take behavioral hints from those around us. If you go from a class where most people aren't paying attention, to one where most people are, it can sway the behavior of the remainder.

Group work means that more successful groups can probably get pretty far on their own without needing much teacher intervention, freeing teacher resources for less successful groups.

Group work also means students can help each other, and the "teaching" students can get experience in passing knowledge to others, the "taught" students also get attention and help from their peers (hopefully in ways that improve student relations more than harm them)

This kind of work can also be a bit freeform and usually ends in a "real" work product, so students can feel pride in making a thing, and in being in charge of what is going on.

The difficulties are mainly around evaluation and resources. It's hard to generalise evaluation of this in the same way as standardised testing does (which is more of a problem for means testing than for actually educating people).

Teachers also probably need to be more prepared for these kinds of things, because students will end up in a variety of situations that the teacher might not have ever seen before.

But the elephant in the room is just money. Try to do a robotics thing, and now you gotta buy a bunch of equipment. Same for lots of stuff involving computers. In other domains it could be easier (I had a math class that worked on this model, and the costs were basically the book and the calculator), but there's a need for money. Too many teachers are already fronting relatively inexpensive stuff like stationary.

I agree, that article written by the director of CTY is biased. And most who attended were rich kids, so maybe in aggregate their approach doesn’t make a difference. But it made a difference for me. CTY provided opportunities for me I never would have had otherwise.

I don't think there were other tracks, it was pretty much just high achievers classes and than the regular pool of students.

I can remember vividly my parents wanted to send me to private (Catholic) high school after Primary school. I begged not to be separated from my existing friends who were all going to the local public school (which didn't have a great rep). It was only the presence of these gifted classes which convinced my parents to let me go to the public school. Both of my younger sisters were subsequently sent to Catholic School.

My parents pretty much followed the 'tiger parent' stereotype they put enormous pressure on me to succeed I remember I got 93% on a math test once and my Dad yelling at me and berating me for not doing well enough.

My friends thought my parents were insane, especially when I'd tell them I couldn't go to the movies because my parents were making me study for an upcoming test and things like that. None of my friend's parents seemed to give a shit about their grades.

I'm grateful for opportunities I had as a result of my upbringing, I got into the course I wanted at a good university etc. But looking back now decades later it feels like I was robbed of an adolescence. A lot of people have fond memories of their time in high school all that really stands out to me was enormous amount of pressure I felt, I'm honestly surprised I didn't have some sort of breakdown.

I can remember one of my good friends, who I'd be constantly competing with for top marks seemed to breeze through class with about 1/10th of the effort I put in he'd never study for any tests, he'd be writing up his homework 10 minutes before it was due and getting full marks. I always felt like such a fraud compared to him. I got good grades because my parents leaned so hard on me to put in the work, even at the time I was conscious of that. He got good grades because he was naturally gifted and school came 'easily' to him. Today he has two PHD and is still one of the most intelligent people I know.