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

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

#341

Post by leetcrew » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #214

leetcrew wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do need special attention. The problem is that the average teacher is simply not equipped to deal with their level of need. Kids at the very bottom of the performance distribution tend to have major issues at home, mental health issues, and may even have personality disorders in the dark triad. These kids need serious help from experts. That's too expensive though, so they aren't going to get it and everyone who…

a quick Google search shows that public school teachers get paid as much as or more than a typical LCSW, so I'm not sure why getting these kids help would inherently be super expensive unless you want to also increase the adult-to-student ratio for them by a lot.

even if it's a bit more expensive per student, my guess is it would be very cost effective at improving outcomes for the rest of the kids.

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

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Post by sejtnjir » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #325

sejtnjir wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands, high schools are separated in three cohorts: practical education, higher education and academically oriented education. The latter are further divided in liberal arts tracks called 'Gymnasium' (notable for having Greek and Latin in the curriculum) and somewhat more practically oriented Atheneum. This has been the case since 1968.

And can you switch track or are you limited by your school choice in your teens

You can. Typically by completing a 'lower' tier and starting in the final year of 'higher' tier.

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

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Post by leetcrew » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #159

leetcrew wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this is what I'm saying. keeping them in the same class with the rest of the kids is just pretending to teach them. all it does is protect administrators from accusations of tracking.

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

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Post by naasking » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

"Better achievement" isn't the only relevant metric. There are plenty of other reasons why separation could be justified.

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

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Post by JoshuaEddy » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #327

Separating kids into streams within the same school doesn’t work, because school is about enculturation, and the kids are still together at recess. Separating gifted kids into “magnet schools” sort of works, but they’re just getting the same teachers they’d get anywhere else—we don’t really know how to select for teachers that can teach gifted kids any better, so we just select for teachers with impressive resumes. Y…

Same teachers as anywhere else? At my public magnet school I was taught by a National Teacher of the Year, a board member of a national mathematics group, and a few PhDs. The faculty needed to guide/craft winning entries for prestigious science competitions, and coach nationally-competitive mathematics teams, and teach classes years past Advanced Placement courses. That is not your run-of-the-mill teacher.

The faculty I had was enthusiastically involved in all of these things and performed well. The few exceptions that did not live up to that level were well known, and the very involved parents pressured the principal and leadership to change at every opportunity - but public schools don't have much flexibility for getting rid of teachers.

Of course, the caliber of the faculty is determined by many factors, and other magnet schools may have terrible teachers. But it is up to the principal, school board/leadership, parents, and teachers to give the kids the opportunity to reach their potential.

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

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Post by trempdig » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

midasz wrote: post #336

trempdig wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She does absolutely nothing to dispute the points they made about her actual research. It’s ad hominem attacks on her critics and pointing out her own credentials. She’s never refuted any of their attacks on her work itself, because she knows her work can never be replicated.

Did or did you not create a new account solely to bash on Dr. Boaler?

I did not. However, her continued attacks on real science did upset me enough to make a new account to comment (I forgot my old password). But if I had made an anonymous account to bash her it would make sense, considering the irrational rabid behavior of her fan base that ignores all of the reproducible studies in favor of her feel-good frauds.

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

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Post by yters » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

Merrill wrote: post #319

yters wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of history? I'd argue three Rs is the basics everyone needs, and then they can find their own way.

Reading and writing are unnecessary for much of the population given the progress in speech to text and text to speech algorithms. We can go straight to learning how to express ideas in speech and learning how to locate, access and understand information. And calculators have rendered arithmetic unnecessary for some time. The focus should be on how to use calculation for financial and technical purposes.

I wonder if inability to do mental math explains the enormous debt people have these days...

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

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Post by yters » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #308

yters wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of history? I'd argue three Rs is the basics everyone needs, and then they can find their own way.

Most of history was a very different place before advancements outright snapped assumptions in half. Before most of the population was farm laborers and societal hierarchical complexity and knowledge was limited by this. Industrialization was raising pollution and standards of living and making it clear that a lack of education wasn't a healthy option - although partially driven by wrong reasons - paranoid anticathol…

Why do you believe public schooling improves critical thinking?

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

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Post by pingyong » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #59

cortesoft wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They usually use test results to measure achievement, though, and the smart kids can't do that for the other kids (at least assuming they aren't cheating)

Whenever teachers realize they're being evaluated based on some metric, they almost immediately begin gaming that metric and with that it ceases to be a good metric. I had teachers give a lot of "group tests", walk out of the classroom during tests, etc. Standardized testing aims to correct this, but I think it's now considered by many teachers to be a joke. Even when exams are administered by independent proctors, t…

Tbh if you can "teach the test" without imparting meaningful understanding of the material, the test wasn't good the first place.

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

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Post by onemoresoop » Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

jml78 wrote: post #321

tuesdayrain wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The split doesn't need to be permanent, you could always rearrange the top/bottom achievers in each group.

But that never happens. I come from the opposite side of the equation. I was not allowed into the gifted and talented program in my school because I had a lot of trouble with reading when I was young. However, I was probably the most gifted person in mathematics. But the G&T program was only for people who scored high on both. So what happened? I was stuck in the average kids where I excelled but was bored. Anytime m…

Similar story here but in a different country in eastern Europe where there's no G&T program. I had access to intensive math though and shudder at the thought of my son would have to deal with that. He's currently just 2yo so we don't have an insight yet..