New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program • Hacker News Board

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#261

Post by darthvoldemort » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #250

darthvoldemort wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. If you stick advanced kids with less advanced kids, both sets of kids will suffer because the advanced kids will be extremely bored and the less advanced kids will get discouraged because the ad…

> You know nothing about teaching and education That is incorrect. > The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. Yes, that's the thinking that justified tracking. Among the problems with segregated G&T programs, however, is that G&T-identified and non-G&T students are not, within each group, “of similar learning abilities”; Both have wide variation…

You are exactly the type of person who is pushing out the best kids into private school. Private schools in California are getting record numbers of enrollment after how horribly public schools handled the pandemic, and after how it wants to gut programs in the name of "equity". Your kind will reap what they sow, because it will create a 2 class system where anyone who can afford private school will go there, leaving essentially the economically most disadvantaged in public school. And along with the students, people will fight to cut money to public schools as well, since many will be paying for private schools.

Kids that are advanced need to be with other advanced kids. Not all kids are equal in ability. Using weasel words to push an agenda of "equity" that hurts the best and brightest is what will kill public education and push moderate Democrats such as myself to voting for Republicans who want vouchers to gut the public education system.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#262

Post by detaro » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #260

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is what you describe, every kid takes the tests now because they are standardized.

Interesting. Is this true for all U.S. school districts? I am very surprised to learn that all kids are being I.Q. tested.

I doubt it's IQ tests specifically.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#263

Post by disambiguation » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

astkaasa wrote: post #251

disambiguation wrote: post #194

kind of tangential.. but i'm constantly baffled by how antiquated our K-12 education system is. 8am - 2pm, a few dozen kids in 1 class room, 1 teacher, 1 white board, shuffled from one class to the next, school bells, homework, midterms, final exam. compare this side by side with schooling 200 years ago, and not much has changed. i can't understand why education hasn't been open sourced and unified.. an why there isn…

> 8am - 2pm, a few dozen kids in 1 class room, 1 teacher, 1 white board, shuffled from one class to the next, school bells, homework, midterms, final exam. It's more or less the same pattern in universities. Why do you consider it outdated?

true, i excluded universities because there's slightly more innovation at that level .. more ways to mix and match your education. K-12 on the other hand is very rigid.

i guess "outdated" is a bad measure, because being old doesn't make it bad. just the fact that todays model hasnt updated much to 200 years is striking. things i'd like to see done differently:

- abolish the linear locked in scheduling. advanced kids can move ahead, but also move in different directions. we should allow kids to pursue classes they enjoy while encouraging them to explore different specializations.

- allow adults to come back to school at night. we have a significant population that doesn't have a high school diploma. they are paying the taxes after all, they should have access. https://www.censusscope.org/us/rank_education_withouths_2000...

- teachers should collaborate instead of working in silos. we should have a singular unified model of education ex. khan academy does a great job of this. open source, always accessible, clear progression, emphasis on collaboration and support among teachers. teacherspayteachers is also good at addressing this.

- students should collaborate instead of working in silos. both as peers and across grades. speaking anecdotally, i used to tutor math long ago and felt that through teaching i also improved my own fundamentals.

- homework needs to be overhauled. homework is largely just busy work at the moment. it should be treated as a continuous self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses.

- testing needs to be overhauled. the incentives for high scores are misaligned for both teachers and students. as a result we often see teachers teaching to the test and students/parents gaming the system. when i got in to college, i took a 2 hour math assessment that got gradually harder over the course of the session (algebra -> multi-var calculus). this was used to decide what math level i should be placed at. tests should be used as assessments that determine your level and curriculum.

and these are all just high-level ideas that don't speak to specifics of curriculum. in general, we need to redesign education in the following terms: over a decade, how do we best prepare our kids for the real world.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#264

Post by darthvoldemort » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #246

darthvoldemort wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend lives in Fairfax and her school district feeds into TJ, so I assumed it was in Fairfax. This is a front-and-center issue for her.

My apologies. I've since learned that TJ is a Fairfax County School Division school. TJ is smack dab in the middle of Alexandria. I didn't realize how unrelated Virginia's school division system is to its municipal structure. I didn't grow up here, so it seems absurd to have a completely different county's schools in our city.

After your question, I asked me friend, and she said it's so damn confusing what the rules and borders are that it's easy to get confused.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#265

Post by mcculley » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #262

mcculley wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Is this true for all U.S. school districts? I am very surprised to learn that all kids are being I.Q. tested.

I doubt it's IQ tests specifically.

What tests would they be? My point is that, at least in the system I experienced, a fraction of students were given IQ tests. They were then placed into special classes. Is jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrong?

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#266

Post by wizwit999 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

moneywoes wrote: post #19

wizwit999 wrote: post #8

Bad decision, went to these schools

More info please, how was your experience

Basically, I was poor so I lived in a bad neighborhood, all the schools were bad except for the g&t one, this and the SHSAT are awesome for allowing smart immigrants in poor neighborhoods to get a good education. Now one may ask why not make all the schools good but the issue wasnt in funding, there were deeper societal issues among the students who went there, which isnt an easy problem to fix

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#267

Post by chucksmash » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #198

bitwize wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you reconcile this view with the fact that asians were also discriminated against, but now do better than whites? There are places where blacks do better than whites. In the Bronx, New York, the standard of living went up because of an influx of Afro-Caribbean immigrants who made more than the local white population. But minorities with an earned advantage are outside consideration of equity policy, which is…

Thanks again for all the explanation and the civil conversation. I guess the only things that stays a mystery for me is why the focus on race, especially when you said that they focus on poor people inside that group?

Race was the deciding factor in doling out these injustices historically.

Skin color is probably not how we would choose to classify people if we were starting from scratch today, but if poor white people always got to use the front door and well-to-do black people had to use the side door, to say "we're fighting for the right of everybody both rich and poor to be allowed to walk in through the front door" is a true statement that misses the problem.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#268

Post by geofft » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #141

geofft wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a school district in the deep south that was racially segregated, as found by the court system, until a month before I graduated. This was in 2006. Not last century. The school district didn't, of course, test people by race or have a Colored Students High School or whatever. What they did was to put schools and school zones in ways that happened to line up with strong demographic differences in swaths o…

Which I agree would be racially segregated. But the original comment stated that the determiner was "not enough blacks" not "intentionally setting school boundaries to avoid blacks".

Read my comment again, please. I specifically said that at no time did the law ask whether anyone intentionally set school boundaries one way or another - just that they were set in a way that had this statistical effect.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#269

Post by jxidjhdhdhdhfhf » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #265

detaro wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it's IQ tests specifically.

What tests would they be? My point is that, at least in the system I experienced, a fraction of students were given IQ tests. They were then placed into special classes. Is jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrong?

They take standardized tests related to normal school topics such as math, reading, etc. They don't take IQ tests.

Re: New York City to Phase Out Its Gifted and Talented Program

#270

Post by BeFlatXIII » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #122

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those leadership exercises would realistically carry over into IRL benefit after the students graduate? For that matter, how many G&T students would check out because they're focused on leadership rather than abstract problem solving?

Leadership and management are like riding a bike in that you can teach children to do it, but if you never learned, it's likely you never will. Management training programs for regular teenagers are common in the fast food industry, and it's a differentiating life skill. I think giving that to exceptional 8-12yr olds is more valuable than exploring their creativity in an isolated class away from their peers. Few peop…

> Management training programs for regular teenagers are common in the fast food industry, and it's a differentiating life skill

This may be different depending on where you grew up, but in my memory, the top students were too busy with sports and band to get McLeadership training as a high schooler. At least the marching band nominally had section leader positions, but the reality was more so that the adults in the room made all the decisions and section leadership roles were purely titular for purposes of helping the scholarship applications in the college search.