Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study • Hacker News Board

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#41

Post by liquidise » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #33

taneq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fund education sufficiently that "No Child Left Behind" doesn't turn into "No Child Allowed Ahead".

In the US spending per student on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Achievement has been flat[1]. There’s no shortage of money. Practically unlimited education funding has limited effects on results[2]. It’s structural change that’s needed, like acceleration for all. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/school-funding-system-not-broken-i... [2] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-c...

2 other figures to consider in your analysis (since 1970):

- Total US inflation rate: ~550%

- US Population growth: ~60%

This suggests education spending, per child, is roughly 1/3 what it was in the 1970 (or so my late night napkin math says)

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#42

Post by bamboozled » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

austinl wrote: post #29

barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

I wholeheartedly agree, and came out so disillusioned with the public education system that I'm struggling to decide what the right answer will be for my children. I understand that many kids are not this way, but I was the type that read physics textbooks while in elementary school. We had a mentorship program that paired kids with someone from two grades above (e.g. 1st graders with 3rd graders). My reading level w…

Have you considered this is a problem that's pretty specific to you and what while your experience might suck. It also sucks for kids who can't read well, period.

I think while schooling is far from ideal, most kids aren't reading physics books in elementary school. Many kids are struggling to cope on several different fronts.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#43

Post by boublepop » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

HenryKissinger wrote: post #7

barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

Counterpoint: the general level of maturity of an individual, and in particular their emotional maturity and their social maturity, do not strongly correlate with their intellectual maturity. Someone may be advanced enough to graduate at 18 with a bachelor's degree in a technically challenging field, but lack enough self-discipline, sense of responsibilities, or basic social graces and knowledge of social codes to re…

It seems that if your suggestion was true, then the effect would be seen in the study as a negative effect of academic acceleration, no?

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#44

Post by alasdair_ » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #30

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the book you mention is a fan of the current, utterly disastrous Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. That's an instant write-off to me.

Maybe it should be a prompt to look at DeVos with a fresh mind, instead? I've heard very little about her actual actions or policies beyond revoking the "Dear Colleague" letter.

My initial concerns with DeVos were twofold: first, she had never spent a single day in an American public school and second, that the primary reason she was appointed was the millions of dollars she contributed to Trump’s campaign.

It seemed very unlikely that out of roughly 150 million eligible Americans, the very best choice was someone who had zero experience with the public school system.

After she began her work, the thing that I particularly disliked was her support of Indiana charter schools to both receive federal taxpayer funding while at the same time being allowed to ban a student for being gay (or their parents being gay).

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#45

Post by hadlock » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

brianberns wrote: post #13

Here's my data point to the contrary: I entered college a few weeks short of my 17th birthday in the early 1980's. I was about 1.5 years younger than others in my class, on average. I made many good friends, but my relative lack of maturity still had a huge impact on my emotional well-being (especially when it came to dating). I'm now in my 50's and still dealing with the psychological repercussions of my parents' de…

This was my own father's experience. Not being able to drive for an entire year after his peers got their license was a major social handicap, especially in a more rural area. When I skipped a grade to get into an accelerated program, my dad deliberately held me back a year the following year to prevent the same from happening to me. It worked out ok because it was a tiny school district and the accelerated class was 30 kids across three grades under a single teacher.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#46

Post by colechristensen » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #2

There is no argument against academic acceleration beyond that it increases inequality of achievement. If the school system was about education more than childcare acceleration would be the norm for bright children and we’d have 14 year olds starting their Bachelor’s level studies in every school and 20 year olds who already had doctorates in every city of any size. Instead we waste their time, to their detriment and…

I experienced long term psychological effects from lack of proper education pacing.

From the very beginning, I entered kindergarten as the only one in my class able to read. The teacher, doing her best, sent me off to read by myself in the corner as she taught the rest of the class. In the years where your brain is programmed to adapt itself to the environment it expects for the rest of life, I only ever had to do things which were to me trivially easy. There was this constant social distance and having to put on a sort of mask in order to interact with my "peers". At the same time everyone around me was always telling me how smart I was.

Everything was easy until it wasn't and my subconscious was simply unprepared to cope with not everything being trivial and socially making it very hard to actually be myself around people because of this very strongly built in assumption that nobody cares about what I think in conversation (amongst other things) so that I simply couldn't think of anything to say.

The struggle is real and never really has gone away.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#47

Post by boublepop » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #28

I wonder if they lack good ways of measuring this. I skipped a few grades and started university at 15. It took years to catch up socially and in many ways I never did. I wouldn't recommend it. In retrospect, I'd say a better thing to do with a smart kid is to convince them that they should work on things they're not as good at. Nobody's good at everything. However, that would have required individual attention of a…

“Took years to catch up” seems a loaded sentence. So yes maybe someone wouldn’t act like a 20 year old until they actually turn 20. But that is’t a great argument for keeping back their education for 5 years. If academic acceleration was more widely accepted you would just have been starting at 15 with other 15 year olds and there would have been no social context pressuring you to act 5 years older just because you did well in school.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#48

Post by zjs » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #30

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the book you mention is a fan of the current, utterly disastrous Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. That's an instant write-off to me.

Maybe it should be a prompt to look at DeVos with a fresh mind, instead? I've heard very little about her actual actions or policies beyond revoking the "Dear Colleague" letter.

Her actions and policies aren't well-publicized, but they're not good.

As a simple example: in 2017, DeVos and Trump proposed "cutting $1.2 billion for after-school programs that serve 1.6 million children, most of whom are poor, and $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction" [1]. These cuts also affected efforts such as mentoring, recruitment, and retention [2].

In 2018, she proposed regulations that "require full hearings, cross examination of sexual assault victims, and raise the standard of evidence to hold a student accused of sexual assault accountable" [3], which experts have said "would allow schools and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to ignore much of the sexual harassment that occurs in schools" [3].

I don't even know how to summarize this whole mess, so I'm just going to use the subtitle of the article: "The administration wants to keep schools safe by ditching rules meant to prevent racial bias in school discipline" [4].

More recently, she "illegally delayed an Obama-era rule that required states to address racial disparities in special education programs" [5].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-... [2]: http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Funding-the-Wall-vs-ESEA-Titl... [3]: https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/11/betsy-devos-education-... [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/trumps... [5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/betsy-devos-s...

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#49

Post by beaner » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

zjs wrote: post #34

beaner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start with supporting charter schools. They're public schools that are allowed to push out of typical restrictions and teach children in new ways. Overall, they're an excellent investment and the data shows that they work. They face many strong and sad political challenges. There's a recent book called Charter Schools and their Enemies that is a good read about the story of them.

> Overall, they're an excellent investment and the data shows that they work. Searching, I'm finding mixed results. It seems like some studies show that they have worked in specific situations, whereas others show that they have not worked on other specific situations. I wasn't able to find a comprehensive survey that drew overall conclusions. Are you aware of one? I'm also finding little research on the impact of a…

Yes, these are exactly the topics the book addresses. A lot of it focuses explicitly on the difference in results between charter and non-charter schools in the same building, with the same demographics and student pool. If you're thinking of a "what about x," it is probably considered.

The first one or two chapters is sort of dry due to pretty much just listing statistics, but it subsequently gets more interesting.

Re: Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study

#50

Post by TomMarius » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

bamboozled wrote: post #42

austinl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree, and came out so disillusioned with the public education system that I'm struggling to decide what the right answer will be for my children. I understand that many kids are not this way, but I was the type that read physics textbooks while in elementary school. We had a mentorship program that paired kids with someone from two grades above (e.g. 1st graders with 3rd graders). My reading level w…

Have you considered this is a problem that's pretty specific to you and what while your experience might suck. It also sucks for kids who can't read well, period. I think while schooling is far from ideal, most kids aren't reading physics books in elementary school. Many kids are struggling to cope on several different fronts.

Have you considered that the psychological effects on said children are not ignorable even if there is only a small minority of them?