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

#271

Post by asoneth » Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #212

asoneth wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related, I'm absolutely in favor of everyone moving to a state that matches their priorities, but if someone prioritizes "highly-ranked public schools" then you might want to look closely before moving to a generic "red" state. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho... There are absolutely "red" states like Nebraska with good public schools, and "blue" states like New Mexico with poor public sch…

The gap between public and private schools is going to widen significantly - the point isn't to switch to a different public school district, but to exit the public school system given the conflict of interests they have against students.

In my experience and talking with other parents it's often more nuanced than public vs private (or red vs blue). The best schools in our region are dominated by wealthy suburban public schools, a few elite magnet public schools, and a few expensive ($60k+) private schools. Whereas the performance of the cheaper private schools and most charters don't seem to be substantially better or worse than the average public school.

However, there are definitely a couple public school districts that entered into a death spiral and the parents fleeing those are what keep the mediocre private/charter schools in business.

But if there's one thing I've learned is that parents rarely base their actual school choices on their politics -- the most left-wing liberals will send their kids to a private school and the most right-wing conservatives will send their kids to a public school if they think that's in the kids' best interest.

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

#272

Post by mcculley » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #269

mcculley wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s my point. When I was tested as “gifted”, it was an IQ test. Not every student was tested. Testing every student would have resulted in different outcomes. That is not fair.

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

#273

Post by atmosx » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

darthvoldemort wrote: post #159

superflit2 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real thing about the asians is: There is a whole narrative that people are equal and have same capabilities. Anyone can be a sport start if trains enough or a super scientist if study enough. Then looking at statistics it is not true. The same people with cognitive dissonance claim that because social factors, etc. Usually whites get a better treatment thus because and only because of that they have better repres…

Asians are not genetically more intelligent than other races. If this were the case, Asia would be more of a powerhouse than just the "factory workers of the world". Only a small amount of innovation is coming out of Asia compared to the US. Asians in the US are more motivated to study, it's the culture. It doesn't take a lot of dedication to studying to get a major advantage over those that don't study as hard.

China and Taiwan are in Asia. Between the two of them there is at least as much if not more tech know-how (soft & hard) in many areas (e.g. face recognition, semiconductors) compared to all others continents combined.

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

#274

Post by savanaly » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #218

nobody9999 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think this is true. Asians are being punished because they're successful, and their existence bucks the narrative the blank-slate activists want to push. No. Everyone is being punished, not just Asians. Ditching G/T programs is going about this completely backwards, and hurts all students regardless of ethnicity or melanin content. The problem is that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods suck . Let's f…

Part of the problem is, as you mention, the schools. But the other, much harder part of the problem, is the homes. If your parents aren’t engaged in parenting and you come from poverty, you are at a disadvantage that in no way can be fixed by the time you spend at your school each day. You’re treading water at best. If you want poor kids to do better, you have to improve their home life. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…

I think even more important than home is peer groups. Research I read about in The Nurture Assumption [0] convinced me that much more important than home life (home life being called "shared environment" I believe because in a twin study it's the thing most shared by two non-biologically related siblings) is peer environment. If your friends all think that learning isn't cool and tend to do drugs or whatever, children will follow in that path, and parenting affects that very little despite our intuitions.

How to solve the peer group problem? As far as I know it's extremely difficult, even more than reforming home life. You can split up peer groups and distribute their members into peer groups with different mindsets and they will generally conform, but the ratio has to be quite steep towards the peer group you're integrating into. I don't know what the number but I would guess something like 15 to 1. There's definitely not enough middle and upper class classrooms to go around to house all kids from more troubled areas under my stated assumptions. But perhaps the process could be incremental?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption