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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)

#581

Post by hyperhopper »

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…

> Test scores highly corelate with the % of students receiving free lunch

Nit: They don't highly correlate, they inversely correlate

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

#582

Post by karaterobot »

tpoacher wrote: post #74
jeremyjh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then also click the provided link, which leads to a summary of the report, claiming that "this is unlikely to reflect teacher prejudice, but availability of 'gifted programs' in predominantly black schools". In which case, the solution is "fund more gifted programs in schools that lack them", not "defund existing gifted programs". Which is kinda what the article's author started to argue but never quite got there…

No fair actually reading the source material, we're just here to yell at each other fruitlessly and solely on the basis of our preexisting ideas.

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

#583

Post by scythe »

atestu wrote: post #226
arcticbull wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The incentives are misaligned. Private prisons make more money if people go back to prison…!

Private schools (assuming consolidation, which is common) make more money if students need continuing adult education.

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

#584

Post by sokoloff »

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?

What outcome are you seeking from schooling? The answer to that determines which student needs the better teacher, in order to achieve the desired outcome.

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

#585

Post by mjburgess »

vorpalhex wrote: post #577
jmull wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general issue with merit-based systems is the definition of merit. In practice there are strong cultural aspects to it, favoring characteristics the dominant group likes. So merit-based programs end up conferring the most advantages to those best conforming to the ideals of the dominant culture, strengthening the dominant culture. It's debatable (at least) whether that's a good thing... if you consider the domina…

> In practice there are strong cultural aspects to it Study, do your homework, behave? What "strong cultural aspect" do you see?

That's quite funny... do you really not see it?

Study the topics we think are important in the ways we think are important behaving in the ways we think are important.

No schooling in human history looks like the schooling you're describing, yet you treat is as some concequence of nature.

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

#586

Post by [deleted] »

com2kid wrote: post #524
908B64B197 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gifted programs are "unacceptably white". You are only scratching the surface here. Some places had a hard time "proving" their gifted programs were "too white" so they started using the term "white and white-adjacent" to include Asian kids as well (often from impoverished background but that's another issue) in these stats [0]. > I don't see why race has anything to do with it. Buckle up. The SF school district is…

I grew up with a diverse group of friends. The way math is taught is quite often racist. I've seen entire math textbooks based around examples featuring American sports. If you don't know the rules of American football, you are not going to understand any of the examples in the book. I spent a lot of time in school and college explaining various American sports rules to friends. That is the most trivial of examples,…

[deleted]

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

#588

Post by ken47 »

Equality of opportunity is impossible. Equality of outcome is an order of magnitude more impossible.

Each of us was born into this world through a randomized process that was not created by humankind: the genes you were born with, the environment you were given before you could manage your own affairs, the accumulation of genetic mutations over the course of countless millennia that resulted in who you are today. This is the opportunity you were born with.

To think that we can compensate for this random process with any level of precision is to wage war with nature, and I'd bet that nature will win.

It is an admirable goal, and certainly we can take steps to reduce inequality of opportunity. But true equality of opportunity, or anything close to it, is unattainable in this universe.

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

#589

Post by mpalmer »

nscalf wrote: 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…

I always have the same question for people like this.

What do you want the world to look like 10, 20, 50 years from now, and how would the changes you're pushing for making immediately get us all closer to that?

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

#590

Post by jakelazaroff »

abeyer wrote: post #559
jakelazaroff wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but a study's conclusion isn't preordained. It's entirely possible for authors to end up disproving their hypothesis. So it doesn't follow that, because more research proposals about "reverse discrimination" were rejected, then more studies concluding "reverse racism" (holding all else constant) would be rejected.
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