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)

#541

Post by robonerd » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

rockemsockem wrote: post #515

robonerd wrote: post #48

The gifted program helped me immensely in highschool, although the hour or two I actually spent in the gifted classroom was mostly wasted playing board games. However being in that program gave me the ability to switch classes/teachers whenever one wasn't working for me, usually because some teachers could maintain a civil classroom and other teachers let the students run wild and taught nothing. Because I was in the…

"Civility" sounds eerily close to a sort of social credit score. All it takes is one teacher to mark you down on civility and then you're ruined. This type of program sounds like it would lead to offering the best education and opportunities to the most docile and willing to accept authority. Not great attributes to select for in a world where we desperately need independent thinking and problem solving.

As I said, I don't know how it should be implemented. I'm certainly not proposing the implementation of a social credit system. What I am saying is that I'm confident that the mechanism by which gifted programs help students is by allowing them to escape the poor classroom conditions of inadequate teachers and particularly, their misbehaving peers. Personally, I wasn't very good at learning when placed in classrooms with delinquient druggies who's idea of fun is to see how many times they can throw wadded paper at the back of my head.

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

#542

Post by tester756 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #497

victor9000 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll bite, how are IQ tests racist?

Let's take a math story problem. Give an upper class white kid a problem involving tennis scores, no problem. The kid will be able to easily understand what is being talked about, there isn't anything mentally jarring going on. Give a poor black kid a problem involving tennis scores, boom, problem. Odds of a poor black kid knowing how tennis scoring works, much less likely. My, largely well to do, neighborhood has te…

>Give a poor black kid a problem involving tennis scores, boom, problem. Odds of a poor black kid knowing how tennis scoring works, much less likely.

Over around 18 years of having various maths topics in schools

The only thing that required some "non-math" knowledge were cards related questions and maybe dice

but what is that tennis counting example? do they actually appear on IQ questions?

how about maths exams?

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

#543

Post by DAlperin » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #491

DAlperin wrote: post #335

Alright, I don't imagine this will be a common take here but here goes. I am a product of the New York City public school system. I have spent the majority of my life as a student in it. The New York city public school system is both the largest public school system in the country and the most segregated. The argument about removing gifted programs are built on the faulty assumptions that the students in those progra…

> When we are calling for an end to "gifted" programs in New York, it is not because we "hate smart kids" but because we want resources to be evenly divided so that everyone can get a well funded well rounded education, not just the rich kids in gifted classes. This is not a single issue but is a larger component of an attempt to dismantle segregation in public schools. Ok, then that's what you should ask for. Ask fo…

> If you single out the elimination of a specific program as a proxy for what you really want,

The problem is that in New York at least the gifted programs are the direct mechanism by which rich parents uphold the status quo of segregation. The gifted prgrams are not a proxy, they are a symptom. As I said elsewhere in this thread: we are looking for a fair allocation of resources to actually give schools the ability to meet every student where they are and to engage them wherever that is.

The fact that gifted programs would be needed at all is a failure of our public school system. Every school should have the resources to adequately engage and educate every student regardless of their academic starting point.

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

#544

Post by systemvoltage » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

mikece wrote: post #20

Eliminating accelerated or gifted programs doesn't create equality any more than mandating a uniform maximum height will stop people from growing past 2 meters in height. All it does it rob society at large from the possibility of the exceptionally able from realizing their potential sooner. If we're willing, as a body politic, to eschew the possibility of an exceptional learner from discovering things like the cure…

[flagged]

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

#545

Post by jakelazaroff » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

car_analogy wrote: post #494

jakelazaroff wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggesting that the authors intentionally omitted the main result of their study from the abstract and hid it under layers of obfuscating details for sharp-eyed readers to uncover is basically a conspiracy theory. The far more straightforward explanation is that the authors saw it as one fact among many that contributed to their overall conclusion stated in the abstract.

It's not a conspiracy theory, but an empirically validated fact, as the study in my link showed. It is not the only one with such findings: Ceci et al. (1985) found a similar pattern. Research proposals hypothesizing either "reverse discrimination" (i.e., against White males) or conventional discrimination (i.e., against ethnic minorities) were submitted to 150 Internal Review Boards. Everything else about the propos…

This quote has to do with research proposals, not study results.

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

#546

Post by AlgorithmicTime » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #115

jaywalk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happens when we decide "everyone is gifted" and teach all students at the level that would have been taught only to gifted students before? Seems like the obvious outcome would be a lot more students who struggle, necessitating a slower track for them. So instead of regular and gifted classes, you have regular and "non-gifted" (for lack of a better term) classes. This is why equity is a bullshit goal.

Equity isn’t a bullshit goal. As is typical, the concept get confused because one assumes that gifted programs correctly track students based primarily on ability, whereas in my personal experience and looking at the data, they primarily track students based on socioeconomic status. It’s not about denying that some students have the ability to excel in subjects in comparison to their peers. The question is whether or…

What if socioeconomic status is heavily correlated with ability?

We know IQ is highly predictive of socioeconomic status. We know that IQ is almost entirely heritable barring things like nutrient deficiencies and disease.

So why would it be surprising to see that kids of higher economic status people are themselves more able than kids of impoverished people?

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

#547

Post by wbsss4412 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #502

wbsss4412 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless equality of outcome is your goal those differences shouldn't bother you. I’m sorry, but this simply doesn’t follow. The premise: that there are a multitude of things that lead to to disparities (even just random chance). If disparities are random then yes, that’s not a problem I’m going to get tussled up about. But it’s not a matter of “it could be anything”. We have strong evidence that it is oppression, an…

If it is actually oppression, then yes that is a valid reason to be concerned. But let's be clear, you just claimed that the mere existence of disparities is evidence of oppression. That only follows if group outcomes would be equal in the absence of oppression, but that is a completely invalid assumption that has no basis in historical fact.

I claimed that disparities are evidence, not that they are proof.

It’s not nor us it ever been about the disparities alone, but the disparities in conjunction with the long history of racial oppression in America. People are alive today who grew up under Jim Crow. People are alive today who were threatened with violence for attending elementary school.

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

#548

Post by killjoywashere » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

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…

> wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better schools

This is not the issue. The real issue is that some wealthier localities defund their public school system through anti-taxation measures and the wealthy send their kids to thriving (well funded, large student population) private schools and those who can't afford the private school tuition (rivals private college tuition) are stuck with either parochial schools (middle class families, associated with their church) or public schools (poor kids, who graduate functionally illiterate if at all).

Tier 1: private school kids, whose parents control the local government and economy

Tier 2: middle class sending their kids to Christian schools where they can learn why the order of things is the way it is through divine writ

Tier 3: public schools, radically underfunded, basically holding cells.

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

#549

Post by MockObject » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #517

MockObject wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does social determination include culture? That's a greater determinant of outcomes than skin color, as the example of outcomes between African Americans and Nigerian immigrants indicates.

Culture is socially determined in the sense that culture is simply the collective actions and decisions that a group of people make. Reading the intent behind that statement, though, that Nigerians have succeeded in America despite any hinderances they may have faced due to wider societies treatment of black people, that would be somewhat outside of the framework of what I am talking about. The construction here is,…

Rewriting "culture" as "they are the reason for their own problems” seems rather uncharitable, and unhelpful to the discussion. Why are you doing that, given that it's not adding any clarity?

> having found the statistical outlier that proves your argument

Well, why are they a statistical outlier? If you ask Nigerians, they'll tend to credit their culture. Do you have a different explanation?

> Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing better were there not racial barriers?

I suppose it's more possible that they should be doing much worse than they are, because of the racial barriers.

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

#550

Post by TrackerFF » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

dottedmag wrote: post #41

This reminds me of a short story from Soviet times: Russia, 1917. A commotion on the street. A lady asks a servant to find out what's going on. The servant returns: - Revolution! - That's fabulous. My grandfather was a revolutionary too. What do they wish to achieve? - They want to make sure nobody is rich! - That's odd... My grandfather wanted to make sure nobody is poor. P.S: A sad irony is that Soviet education sy…

But also pretty good at excluding for example Jews from certain prestigious schools, see: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556