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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)

#611

Post by dang »

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…

That's just one two-word phrase, and putting torque on it that distorts the gist of the whole article is not a good direction for threads. That's why we have this guideline:

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#612

Post by unethical_ban »

mpalmer wrote: post #589
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?

I have a question for people like you.

Your comments sounds challenging to the parent comment. Why? The person is making pretty benign observations and opinions. Your comment seems to question their motives.

We should all be asking the question you posed.

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

#613

Post by bombcar »

robonerd wrote: post #173
whatshisface wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you let students attend any classes they wanted, I bet they would sort themselves appropriately. The rowdy kids won't want to be in a classroom where everyone is quiet and the teacher is explaining the central limit theorem.

I think this works well for college, but at the highschool level you have the complicating factor of parents being involved in the decision making. How would you account for the parents who think their little monster is a perfect angel and place their kid in the best classrooms, despite his desire and intention to misbehave?

College shares the same benefit/tool that private schools have - they can kick a student out for misbehavior.

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

#614

Post by MockObject »

nlittlepoole wrote: post #572
MockObject wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or that one group has a more effective culture > Generally, there is a lot of animosity within the black community toward ̶A̶s̶i̶a̶n̶ people who tend to believe any of the above In my experience, there is much, much discourse within the black community regarding culture, and how it affects success.

Absolutely there is but the way that those outside the group make it seem is that we're 100% responsible for how the culture that exists got to where it is. The mainstream culture has problems but a lot of those problems are the result of historical inequities. It needs to be fixed but all of American society needs to see it as something they are also responsible for fixing and not fixing by simply pushing people to…

> all of American society needs to see it as something they are also responsible for fixing

Responsibility for culture is an interesting issue. Very few individuals can claim any significant responsibility.

People tend to look askance at outsiders coming in to fix their culture.

Further, I don't think American mainstream culture is in any position to evangelize its greatness right now.

> not fixing by simply pushing people to adopt the cultural norms of another group of people.

I don't know, I see culture as evolutionary. Everyone should adopt the practices they see succeeding, and abandon they ones they see failing, no?

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

#615

Post by someguydave »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #247
rajin444 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People point out disparities as evidence that there aren’t equal opportunities That’s a very low bar if you take population level disparities and assume it’s a lack of equity causing this. You’re talking about having a deep understanding of incredibly complex systems layered on top of one another. Equality of opportunity is never possible. We’re all born with different genetics. Anything less is just arbitrary line…

> That’s a very low bar if you take population level disparities and assume it’s a lack of equity causing this Are racial disparities socially determined or not?

No, differences in learning ability are largely heritable. Self-identified racial groups vary in statistical distribution of their mental abilities. I think generally in the West the chief cause of differing group outcomes on mental tasks is differing learning abilities.

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

#616

Post by thegrimmest »

jmull wrote: post #565
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…

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…

The thing is that all behaviours carry cultural aspects to them. But clearly some behaviours lead to better economic outcomes than others right? Being sober, working hard, valuing education, cooperating well, these are cultural traits. This fact alone doesn't mean it's wrong to prefer them.

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

#617

Post by rhino369 »

lupire wrote: post #241
tonguez wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“…it is unacceptable to have eighth grade Algebra I classes and gifted education programs that disproportionately exclude Black and brown children.” a definition of exclude is “deny (someone) access to or bar (someone) from a place, group, or privilege.” no one is barring access to these classes on the basis race. can you even imagine that? “sorry, you’re not allowed to take this class; you’re black.” it’s like every…

What you don't understand is that advanced classes have limited seats available compared to students who want them.

That's not what the progressive complain about. But if that is true, the obvious solution is to create more spots.

If the same people wouldn't complain about disparate failure rates, I'd even support making them open enrollment, but weeding people out based on performance. But we all know, people would just claim the classes are racist.

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

#618

Post by _dark_matter_ »

hyperhopper wrote: post #581
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…

> Test scores highly corelate with the % of students receiving free lunch Nit: They don't highly correlate, they inversely correlate

I mean, they do highly correlate. It's an inverse correlation. Correlation tracks from -1 to 1.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation

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

#619

Post by ouid »

bluGill wrote: post #268
ouid wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting out wasteful spending may make your shitty schools cheaper, but it will not make them better.

But it may free up money for things that will make the schools better. Maybe, it is easy to see a problem, hard to fix it. If nothing else a tax break (even if it is only a few cents per resident) is a better use than some programs

Identifying wasteful spending is expensive and inaccurate. An auditor will produce some number of false negatives (remaining wasteful spending) and false positives (useful spending that was cut). Both of these cannot be zero, and the closer you would like to get to zero, the more expensive the audit will be.

Additionally, the relative value of false negatives and positives, in something with as high a force multiplier as education, seems like it will probably fall on the side of false negatives.

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

#620

Post by MockObject »

secabeen wrote: post #609
MockObject wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of ways to get a great education but only one Harvard We had only one Harvard when the country's population was quite a bit smaller. Perhaps, instead of the zero-sum struggle for Harvard attendance, we should be working to create new Harvards. We have the oversupply of academics.

> Perhaps, instead of the zero-sum struggle for Harvard attendance, we should be working to create new Harvards. That takes not dis-investing in public higher ed to the degree we did during the 2008 recession. It takes decades to build a new R1 research institution, and a commitment of large sums of money over that time. Rockefeller created the University of Chicago, Leyland Stanford his namesake, where are Buffet, B…

It's hard to comprehend disinvestment given that tuitions have increased 10x over a few decades, but

> where are Buffet, Bloomberg, Walton, Mars, and Gates Universities?

That's a very good point.

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