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

Much of our intelligence is from our parents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

I'm just stating that my kids' elementary school is nicer than those in our county and definitely from my hometown. They do receive a lot more money than what my hometown spent.

People in this thread are up in arms about the principle, but the reason that they are being challenged is based on how they operate in practice.

Do all children have equal access? Nominally, maybe. But that’s de facto not the case.

https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.htm...

Boing Boing never ended up importing the comments from back then, and when I reached out to a contact about writing a follow up, the entire site was DDOSed.

Too many teachers purposefully abuse the gifted, then react irrationally to perfectly reasonable responses.

(I wasn't paid, and they put it out without my opt in, though to be fair, the editor did quite a bit of editing and free graphics work when they could have thrown the text up as is - a few of the wording changes were probably a good thing, looking back with the wisdom of a 30 something.)

On the other hand, never once have the folks who abused me ever apologized, and they continue to gaslight me and obstruct me to the point I'm considering moving to Italy.

I'm really sick of rude people, and I know it's hypocritical given some of the comments I make on the internet, but from early on in life I've had perpetual issues with folks who have a very high standard for my behavior, but not their own.

I have literal scars from some of what they did, but I also have enemies in the education and medical community who continue to engage in illegal, retaliatory behavior for my first amendment protected free speech.

I cannot emphasize enough how badly it backfired that neoliberals engineered society around the idea that you can't interact with people without permission, then melted down when my response, due to COVID, was basically "Fine, you're right, I have anger issues. I'm also not your caregiver, so keep back six feet."

Well, yes, if by equity you mean the race composition of every class equals the race composition of the school as a whole. But shouldn't equity in education mean that every student gets the instruction and support they need to achieve their potential, insofar as the school is able to provide it, without respect to their race, class or sex?

There were no gifted programs or classes when and where I attended school (6 decades back, in a very rural part of the Great Plains). But there was a teacher in my school who took it upon herself to run a reading lab that you could get into with the blessing of the school principal. Mostly she taught remedial reading to those who needed extra help, but one of her 5 periods each day was called "advanced reading lab" and into that group she took students who showed exceptional or nascent exceptional intellectual capability. In the guise of teaching us to read better and faster, she exercised our brains with science, history, and even math. She's the only teacher I remember by name, and she did more to launch my success in life than any 5 other teachers combined, behind only my parents. Because she made going to school worthwhile - interesting, exciting, and mind-expanding. (She also taught me to read 2000 words per minute with retention, which was a hell of a useful skill, but only a skill - the world of knowledge and thinking was her real gift).