The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#271

Post by aetherson » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

mymllnthaccount wrote: post #122

WalterBright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been convinced that more money for schools produces better results. Sure, that means nicer buildings, but how does that improve education? In Washington State, the teachers finally got their "fully funding" proposal enacted, which was supposed to solve all the funding problems, including big raises for teachers. There's been zero change in results.

It's so funny to me that people treat businesses and government so differently. Want results from your start up? Find someone to invest in it. Want results from a government program? Well, we need to cut out all the wasteful spending.

You're about to see a bunch more interest in cutting wasteful spending at startups. The macro environment in the last 10 years basically let people (both startups and government) get a lot of money for free. That's no longer true, and cost-cutting is important now.

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#272

Post by temp8964 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #200

temp8964 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give a business $15,900 per student ($1.59million per 100 students), they can run much better than most public schools, especially than those public schools in crappy school districts.

If that's true why do private prisons have such higher recidivism rates? This is simply false. > Mamun et al. (2020) report on studies that demonstrate that recidivism rates in private prisons are between 16.7% (Spivak & Sharp, 2008) and 22% (Duwe & Clark, 2013) higher when compared to public prisons. [1] When providing services, private companies do worse because their charter is not to provide services per se, it's…

I am not sure how you can generalize from prisons to schools. Because private prisons are bad, so private schools are bad?

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#273

Post by mmmpop » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #208

mmmpop wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I was a dirt poor child of a single Puerto Rican mom in eastern Kentucky and I was accepted in gifted education the first year I went to public schools (which was the first year it was offered--the reason I went.) But to your point, I was not able to take algebra until 9th grade due to reasons that felt a bit discriminatory as you'd described, but my mother was a maniac and no one liked her, so hard to say if t…

There are always individual cases that work out. Even in systems with extreme oppression, members of oppressed groups succeed. But it is still a problem if there is a large and observable statistical disparity between groups for no compelling reason. Consider a toy admissions criteria where students go through the same process as today but students with black hair have to also win a game of rock paper scissors. There…

I think what I'm getting at is that the "rich White affluent people gave me a chance" and I "didn't behave" according to their standards, so they pushed me out. I was too young to understand, but perhaps they had a fair point?

I was well-behaved and bright, but coarse I suppose.

I was too poor to participate in the fancy science trips, couldn't afford class materials, constantly late, and homework never got done due to what I remember as "family issues". I was bright and gifted, but a high achiever I was not.

I don't blame them for pushing me out of the system, I didn't play by the rules. But from what you're saying, that's part of the problem and I don't disagree... but allowing me to persist and annoy those gifted kids with resources, encouraging families, and ambition wasn't really fair now was it?

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#274

Post by robonerd » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #205

robonerd wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teach all students at the level that would have been taught only to gifted students before? You just can't do that, no matter how much you want it. Some teachers are better than others, they can't all be elite. The teachers union wouldn't let you sack all the mediocre teachers, and even if you somehow could fire them, where would all the new elite teachers to replace the mediocre ones come from? If you just sacked…

Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the remedial student? Gifted students (at least up to middle school) don't need special teachers (an 8th grade math teacher could teach gifted 6th graders), they just need challenging material and peers to keep them motivated and study with.

> Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the remedial student?

The well-behaved students. Good teachers are wasted on troublemakers and class clowns, regardless of their IQ. And if a dim student who scores poorly on IQ tests knows how to sit quietly and behave themself, I think good teachers will help them a lot.

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#275

Post by wbsss4412 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #214

wbsss4412 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability does affect socioeconomic status, I’m not disputing that. The question in a school context, though, is whether socioeconomic status for children determines ability. As I stated in my original list, what I observed was that gifted classes were filled with children from high social status backgrounds. They certainly didn’t create the conditions for their socioeconomic status, their inherited it.

Are you saying we need to genetically level the playing field? It makes logical sense but it’s not a world I want to live in.

I certainly don’t believe in genetically engineering away differences, to answer your question directly.

But it begs the question, do you believe that racial disparities are primarily due to social factors or genetic ones? Because the whole point of equity is that advocates are arguing that it’s due to social factors, and that we should seek to change that.

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#276

Post by kazinator » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

cyberlurker wrote: post #97

jmyeet wrote: post #51

There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays without getting into politics but politics and structural inequality are at the core of this. For the benefit of non-US readers, know that how the US funds public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city your property taxes can vary a lot with the same value property. But what this me…

In NYC they also flatten all Asians into one group and say the “gifted” programs aren't diverse enough because a high percentage are Asian. As if implying Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. all have the same life experience, cultures, advantages, disadvantages… Also you nailed it on the property tax point. Often overlooked as the biggest issue with education. A similar sized home in a good school district ca…

> "all have the same life experience, cultures, advantages, disadvantages…"

Not to mention: 4th generation versus new immigrant.

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#277

Post by iisan7 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

jeandejean wrote: post #158

Very often equity at all cost means leveling down everybody. It also feels a bit contradictory to privilege already gifted students with a programme though.

I don't think it should be privilege to receive an education that challenges you. Punishing the kids for the sins of being born to "privilege" doesn't seem fair. And if kids of privilege are the only ones in the gifted program, you're not doing it right, which is the point of TFA.

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#278

Post by actually_a_dog » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

brian_cloutier wrote: post #192

bobkazamakis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property taxes, school funding is supplemented by state and federal budgets, in inverse proportion to property taxes, so that racial differences in per-pupil funding are negligible: >on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2…

What makes it so bad, and what would be a better way?

I don't have a great alternative in mind, but here is why it's not a good measure: suppose I take any school, then give the teachers a pay raise or a pay cut of X%. Nothing has fundamentally changed about the school, but per student expenditure has gone up or down, respectively, depending on which direction the salary adjustment was.

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#279

Post by swatcoder » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #190

300bps wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That $6,000 per student figure is from 1998 according to the link you provided. Today, the crappy school district near me pays $15,900 per student and the good school district near me pays $19,800 per student.

If you give a business $15,900 per student ($1.59million per 100 students), they can run much better than most public schools, especially than those public schools in crappy school districts.

How big is the business and how is it structured? How much administration is local and how much transparency into operations is given to the community?

Does it have profit responsibilities that need to be extracted from the funding, or is it a non-profit? In either case, does it receive funding from other sources besides the school's own community? What do those sources of funding expect for their contributions?

How big is the moat that allows or prevents competion from forming, and how healthy are the current forces of competition? Are there regulations that ensure market efficiency? Who's responsible for those regulations?

Does it have a formal responsibility to operate a school even when it can no longer do so profitably? Or might communities just be abandoned without any school at all until a new vision is capitalized?

Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)

#280

Post by adolph » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #18

derac wrote: post #11

Gifted programs are "unacceptably white". WTF does that mean? I had to pass essentially an IQ test to get placed into those classes. For me, it made a big difference in being engaged in schoolwork when every class consisted of reiterating content for days which I had mastered in minutes. Edit: I removed "I don't see what race has to do with it." I do see how race can affect this when the gatekeeper is a teacher with…

Just read what he wrote? > Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as gifted compared to white students with similar test scores. Black, Latinx, and Native American students are far less likely to attend a school that even offers a gifted program.

That is not the quote from tfa. The quote is "The current population of students we identify as academically gifted and talented is unacceptably whiter and wealthier than the actual student population of academically gifted and talented students should be."

The author's focus on a particular racial classification seems incongruent with facts, given that students with another racial group are also over-represented in "Gifted Programs."