> Latinx It's hard to take anyone who uses this term seriously. Latinos can't even pronounce it or care for it.
It's easy to pronounce. Rhymes with womxn.
The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
641–650 of 922 posts
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#642Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property tax in California has its own history and complications that makes it difficult to compare California's funding of things based on property tax to anywhere else in the US.
can you link to an article detailing this issue? i'd love to dig deeper on this topic
https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-proposition-13-transf...
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/california-props-...
Late edit: the Wikipedia article would also be something to read up on - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? The point of a public school is that they serve the public good, not shareholder value. The issue isn't that public schools are a money pit, the issue is whether they're educating students. A business will seek a profit. That should not be a factor at all in public education. The costs of public education should certainly be considered, especially the question of how much is spent and the quality of the educatio…
Many public schools are run as an administrative jobs program, not as a public good. Well, they do if public good is as a daycare to let the parents work. Which is something.
That's a separate problem, one that is not solved by making public education private.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if I agree with the premise that the gifted students keep all the resources to themselves. If anything they should require less mentoring, less discipling and their parents should be more likely to be involved financially and in PTA.
> and their parents should be more likely to be involved financially and in PTA. And when gifted programs become screeners of affluence then there are going to be financially involved parents in the PTA which benefits the whole school. But if all of those parents end up at the "good" schools then those schools have considerably more funding (on top of the additional funding from the DOE) to allow them to actually edu…
Do you think public schools are underfunded? Any chart I've seen has shown the opposite, if you compare our schools to other countries'.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Socioeconomic status tracks with academic ability because more well off parents are more likely to read to their kids, participate in their education, and get them help when they need it. It’s a lot like how being tall tracks with being in the NBA, it isn’t a requirement but it sure helps. One of the hardest pills for education policy advocates to swallow is how important parental involvement is. Instead of bitching…
My parents' involvement in my schooling was when I'd get good grades, they'd take me out for ice cream.
(People in those days didn't eat candy, cookies and desserts every day like today.)
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
No schooling looks like study, do your homework, and behave?
So any selection of topics to study is unacceptable by your criteria. We live in a society, we have to have some form of education. In order to give students an education, we have to pick curriculum for them to learn. Some topics are not very important, so we shouldn't focus on teaching them.
What system would you prefer to have in place? Or would you rather jut pick the topics that are taught?
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#647Earlier quoted context omitted.
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? Both “gifted” (well prepared) and “remedial” (poorly prepared) students benefit dramatically from expert teaching. The well prepared students can continue to progress very quickly through challenging material. The poorly prepared students can get help finding and correcting their weaknesses and misconceptions, and practicing underdeveloped prer…
It’s disingenuous to try to call it well prepared vs poorly prepared. Some people are just naturally more academically gifted
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#648Gifted programs as we know, are basically advanced programs for shape-rotators, which closely relates to IQ.
The IQ distribution is different across race groups, therefore you expect to have more representation of certain groups relative to others.
It's obvious that Asians --I am not Asian-- perform extremely well in IQ tests compared to other groups. Same with Ashkenazi Jews. These groups would have, relatively speaking, a higher representation. It would also be more male than your typical classroom.
Just like we have "physically gifted programs" in sports, and in some Blacks are overly represented. People don't seem to bat an eye for such "inequity", because it is understood that, on average, Blacks have superior athletic ability in some sports.
People really have a hard time understanding basic statistical facts, and they take these things personally. When we compare average heights across countries, nobody gets offended because everybody is aware of their own height. A 6'4 American is just as tall as a 6'4 Indonesian, so people don't take personally. Somehow average IQ is this thing that people take personally as if it was an indictment on their intelligence.
Besides, there is much more than IQ. Plenty of people with average IQs are successful. Sure, the premium on IQ increased in our society, but there is so much variance in activities and other inherent or acquired characteristics, it is really not that big of a deal.
With that being said, it is important for a nation to identify exceptional talents --including intelligence-- and nurture these individuals so they maximize their potential. It's good for them, it's good for society as well. Recognizing that people should have different educational experiences is the right thing to do.
Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#649Re: The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)
#650It'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…
> programs end up conferring the most advantages to those best conforming to the ideals of the dominant culture
The definition of merit for any given school, is transparent. School work is relatively straight forward, in that they are designed by the teachers for students to complete, and at the end of the year you can see how students were rewarded or punished with numbers. Also, not all merit-based systems are good, some may reward bad behavior etc., but the solution is not to get rid of merit, but rather adjust what you're selecting for.
Also, I feel like "dominant culture" is an ambiguous term thrown around to justify the ideology of equity and how some groups of people are perpetually oppressed. Arguably the U.S. no longer has a dominant culture. There are many cities with neighborhoods where English isn't required (i.e. Chinatowns, Miami etc). This in turn affects the local schools and their curriculum, which means their merit-based system is for the most part under their control.