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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)

#551

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…

What revolution was the 1917 woman's grandfather apart of?

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

#552
post #255

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…

>my kids' books and chromebooks are always nice and new.

It's interesting to me that you are using this as a proxy for funding.

Schools in low income areas are going to have crappier books and laptops because they're spending their money on things other than books and laptops.

Low income brings with it all sorts of problems. That's why it sucks to be poor.

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

#553
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s two ways to equity. 1. Make sure everyone has access to opportunities. 2. Get rid of all opportunities People are going for the second one despite the fact that it doesn’t actually improve anyone’s life. Its like solving homelessness by burning down all houses.

False dichotomy. It's like countering homelessness by enforcing that a portion of housing is accessible, affordable low-income housing. People sitting in high-income housing then make frivolous statements about all the houses being burnt down, or how we should also remove public basketball courts because of the NBA.

No, you’re talking about option #1, which I also agree is better. That’s not what’s happening here.

If you see a program that doesn’t have equal access, and instead of doing the hard work to get to equal access, you just get rid of the program… that’s the #2 option, the one I’m referring to, which is worse for everyone.

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

#554

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…

This is where I think things are kind to vary wildly between different regions and districts so we have to be specific make sure we are comparing apples to apples. A gift program like you describe “by name only” isn’t a gifted program at all, that doesn’t mean “real” ones don’t exist. It’s like saying the funding for baseballs is not producing any baseball players meanwhile they only use the baseballs for playing ten…

Sure but the issues faced here in New York are not unique, just particularly visible due to the size. The systemically racist systems exist everywhere and I would be willing to bet money that in the majority of districts and regions where gifted programs exist will have absurdly low percentages of brown and black students. And again, that is not because brown and black students aren't as smart. The systems of this country deals them a bad hand before they even know they're playing the game in the first place.

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

#555
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Puberty cannot be understated in terms of its effects...

Probably both ways. Some kids backslide with academics at that age, others seem to gain traction. I didn't mention it but have considered that part of the reason that things became easier for me in the 8th grade is that I was starting to get the mental maturity to think more abstractly and deliberately.

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

#556
post #432

It's probably time to stop letting people in our society that are not building up systems terrorize the rest of us with scarcely hidden threats of slandering your name as a racist. There is nothing racist about having a merit based system within education. If the problem is that it is not entirely merit based, the solution comes from improving the on ramp, not from destroying the program. We should treat people who w…

There are plenty of students (more than some) in non-gifted classes who genuinely want to learn and work hard.

But there are two issues that make those classes terrible:

1) Teachers dedicate 80% of their instructional time to the 20% worst performers, and every incentive pushes them in that direction.

2) More than that, it only takes one or two kids with behavioral issues to reduce teachers' instructional time from near 100% to near 0%, and there's no way to move them out of regular classrooms to classrooms focused on their needs. So if you're a regular student in a cohort with a couple students with behavioral issues, you're pretty much screwed.

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

#557
I was told that Vonnegut wrote "Harrison Bergeron" as a satire of the fears that the right had of equality, not as a satire of the left's possible execution of it. And yet here we are, firmly in "1984 was not supposed to be a how-to manual, people!" territory.

Of course, the shell game has continued. Recall how often you used to hear about equality and not equity, and yet somehow those goalposts have shifted in the last five years. Equity has somehow come to mean that you'll get "your share" of the pie even if you haven't contributed, or despite being completely untalented.

We should sort (not segregate, never that) students by race (self-reported, of course), and then grade such that only a certain percentage in each bucket get As, a few more get Bs, and so on. This ensures a perfect equity balance. If we do this for each grade and each subject within a grade, well, we ought to have very equitable outcomes. Diana Moon Glampers will shotgun down the grades of the Asian "Schroedinger's Minority" group to be in line with everyone else's.

Can't imagine that this won't work out.

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

#558
post #391
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the abstract of the paper you cited: > Yet race remains related to funding disparities and schooling experiences in ways that raise concerns about the role of school finance in perpetuating racial opportunity gaps. What you are pulling out seems to be narrowly-focused and highly-contextualized. Consider [1]: > Property taxation and school funding are closely linked in the United States. In 2018–2019, public educ…

From the article you linked: https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/content/04.2... Compare California and Massachusetts. It seems to demonstrate the point of the poster you replied to. Despite MA relying nearly twice as much on property tax, as state revenue versus California, it seems to have better outcomes. Mostly because as the article discusses, MA appears to use targeted transfers from state revenue t…

And, as is often the case, there's a very loose relationship in Massachusetts between per-student spend and educational outcomes as measured by tests. It's common for urban districts in particular to have high spend and generally poor outcomes.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But study results are only published if the study is done, and the study is often only done if it gets institutional approval for the proposal.

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

#560
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever had a 3rd grader threaten to stab you, and look like they really mean it? A second grader call you the c-word? That kind of thing happening basically every day, often multiple times a day? Credible threats of gang violence on a regular basis. School-wide lockdowns with some regularity due to threats of violence, or violence that has actually occurred. Admin with extremely limited options to deal with any of this…

Hmm, I can't imagine having to deal with those things. People don't act like that where I live.

Consider yourself lucky.

Even worse, imagine being a child growing up in that environment. Actual fistfights were happening every few hours in school where I grew up.

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