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

teachforamerica.org

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

#311

Post by giardini »

bena wrote: post #260
giardini wrote: post #70

Gifted children are rare enough that they can be dealt with one at a time. I see no need for special programs. In contrast handicapped children may require special attention. OTOH I have seen students unwilling to attend a particular school b/c it has a reputation for behavioral problems and also low testing scores. So best spend money on improving education for all. I would like to see more usage of an old tradition…

So why not have the normal needs students helping the children with learning dysfunctions? Promote that camaraderie all the way down. Let them see what it's like in another's shoes. Etc. All of your arguments for putting the gifted in normal classes, but applied to normal students and children with learning dysfunctions. Gifted students are special needs students. They exist on the entire other end of the spectrum th…

>"So why not have the normal needs students helping the children with learning dysfunctions?"

Sure, that's fine.

>"Gifted students are special needs students. "

Gifted students can usually take care of themselves.

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

#312

Post by corrral »

temp8964 wrote: post #238
corrral wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficulty: lots of private schools still manage to be pretty bad, while charging those kinds of rates.

Private school tuitions are much lower than public school funding.

Your survey of private schools is sorely lacking.

Schools that charge under $15k/yr are mostly low-quality religious schools, with a few rare gems (mostly from the Catholics)

Full tuition at schools that people mean when they talk about how good private schools are, starts around $40k on the coasts (day rates, not boarding), and $18-20k at lesser-but-still-sometimes-decent schools in less-affluent areas.

[EDIT] Of course, per-pupil spending and tuition aren't entirely connected—on the one hand, many students don't pay the full rate (much like with private colleges) but on the other, the better private schools usually have other sources of funding of various sorts. Endowments, scholarship funds, lots of supplemental and sometimes quite-large donations from parents and alumni for various purposes.

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

#313

Post by ModernMech »

danans wrote: post #194
willcipriano wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken a close look at the numbers for individual schools in my tri-state area, (NY, NJ, PA) and from my estimate it seems that lower performing schools far and away have the highest per student budgets.

It is much more expensive to teach and support the children at lower performing schools than it is at higher performing schools. Lower performing schools are also providing significant front line social support services for the communities they serve, including food, trauma counseling, sometimes medical intervention, extreme behavior management. None of that is cheap. Students/families at higher performing schools ha…

Also you tend to find daycare programs for teenage mothers at poorer schools. Rich parents get their children abortions, while poor children give birth to their babies.

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

#314

Post by xwdv »

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…

You know what it means.

It has become acceptable in society these days for people to bring down the white race any way they can through these sort of micro aggressions.

As a white person any success or benefit you enjoy can never be truly legitimate, it will always be stained by the original sin of your white ancestors. And if you happen to be straight, or male, or both you are even more guilty. The message is that the white race must not be allowed to progress any further than it has until all other races have caught up or even surpassed it. In the mean time, individuals suffer.

The only time you can be truly understood and seen as a unique individual and not a stereotype is amongst other whites.

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

#315

Post by jeffy90 »

abirch wrote: post #255
car_analogy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 means is the wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools. This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property taxes, school funding is supplemented by state and federal budgets…

> 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: This is not my experience. I chose a more expensive house with higher taxes because the schools are better. They are better funded than those in the surrounding areas. Sure the Federal Govern…

I think sometimes we are quick to discount the affect that home life has on children's school performance. Part of the reason school's are better in wealthy areas is because children in wealthy areas tend to have better home life than children in poor areas.

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

#316

Post by zdragnar »

bsuvc wrote: post #252
corrral wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my city, the worst schools tend to pay a good 20% better than the best ones, for teachers. They get lots of federal and state aid. People still usually prefer not to work at them, if they have options, because the work environment is terrible.

Why is the work environment terrible?

This is correlated with poverty, not race, per se- it's all about the culture of the students. A relative of a friend is a teacher in rural Iowa, an almost all white school. She teaches young students who have no concept of respect for authority or value in learning- getting cussed out by a kindergartener (ages 4-5) is not exactly an unusual thing she has to deal with.

As kids get older, they fall into drugs and / or have kids of their own and / or are told they'll never get into higher education and / or they don't need higher education, they'll just get a low skill job like everyone else in town.

Education for the sake of education really isn't strongly valued by a lot of parents, who have their own struggles and can't really help with homework much past middle school.

Compare all of this with teaching in an area that is more middle or upper class- kids are usually more eager to learn, have fewer discipline problems, and as they get older many know they need to try so they can get into a community college or university.

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

#317

Post by femiagbabiaka »

UncleMeat wrote: post #169
fein wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look around for the source of this, and I can't find the "with similar test scores" part in the Vanderbuilt site article on the Vanderbuilt study this is based on. It says 66% less likely, but the "similar test scores" part isn't in the same paragraph. I really dislike that it is so difficult to find the source of these statements in modern media, as the news articles I read didn't even cite the study, I had…

> Misleading at best as the "tests" they are talking about are not gifted assessment tests, but rather standardized testing which I don't think is that great of an indicator. I find this to be frustrating. How many times have we heard from people defending the existing systems that standardized testing is an appropriate method of stratifying people. When universities decide to minimize the relevance of the SATs we se…

The goalposts will be moved until the desired outcome is achieved.

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

#318

Post by skyde »

brianwawok wrote: post #180
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…

The property tax leading to funding differences is part of the puzzle, but not all of the puzzle. In my random neck of the world we have roughly 4 school districts. 1) Public school 1. Covers most of the black and brown students of the area. 2) Public school 2. Covers most of the lower to middle class white students of the area. 3) Public school 3. Covers most of the higher class white students, especially families o…

you are saying school (1,2,3) get same funding per pupil. but test score for 1 is worse than 3.

So why send you kid to school 4 instead of school 3 ? Is the test score at school 4 significantly better?

I am a parent of a 4 years old, and we recently moved from Canada to USA. Option (4) in Canada is almost non-existent so this is new to me!

I have been trying to compare test-score between private schools and public school to decide if private school is worth it.

But found that most private school do not publish their test score and it's extremely hard to compare them side-by-side.

Any idea how they could be compared in a data-drive way?

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

#319

Post by brianwawok »

brewdad wrote: post #302
brianwawok wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The property tax leading to funding differences is part of the puzzle, but not all of the puzzle. In my random neck of the world we have roughly 4 school districts. 1) Public school 1. Covers most of the black and brown students of the area. 2) Public school 2. Covers most of the lower to middle class white students of the area. 3) Public school 3. Covers most of the higher class white students, especially families o…

Even when you have poorer families who value the better education their children could receive at option 3, the transportation hurdle can be huge. Often they may lack reliable transportation of their own or work at a job or jobs that don't offer the kind of flexibility in the workday that white-collar workers tend to have.

Yes for sure.

You know who can easily transport their kids 30 mins to another school? Rich, stay at home moms.

You know who can't transport their kids 30 mins to another school? A single mom working 2 jobs.

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

#320

Post by bradlys »

aqme28 wrote: post #301
SoftTalker wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subject categories such as "math" are also very broad. I struggled with math in elementary school, because it was mostly about memorization. 3 + 5 = 8. 6 x 7 = 42. Learning and being able to spit out those facts as quickly and flawlessly as possible was most of what I remember about math as a young kid. I was never good at that. I still am not good at that. I got Cs and sometimes lower grades in math. Somehow, though…

Similarly, I got Cs in math in middle school and early highschool. Once I got to calculus something clicked. Now I have a degree in physics and am pursuing a graduate degree in applied mathematics. The math I do now is nothing like the math I was bad at in middle school.

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