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)

#651

Post by robocat » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:34 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…

The same thing occurs in New Zealand, even though most schools are funded by the government (property taxes don’t pay for schools).

The government also tries to help poor students by boosting funding for schools that have poor parents. Schools are ranked into 10 deciles[3] depending on the income of the parents, with an equal number of schools in each decile. The government gives out more funding to schools with poor parents (decile 1), and less funding to schools with rich parents (decile 10).

The academic results of students are strongly correlated with how well-off their parents are[1]. Attendance and other factors are correlated as well[2].

[1] https://keithwoodford.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/socio-economi...

[2] https://figure.nz/search/?query=Deciles

[3] https://www.education.govt.nz/school/funding-and-financials/...

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

#652

Post by derac » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #611

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

I appreciate the rule and that is fair. I do think putting extremely inflammatory racial language front and center is notable. Particularly when it is so casual and so many people feel like it is unobjectionable as can be seen in the replies.

I will refrain from this sort of comment in the future though. Sorry dang!

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

#653

Post by cupofpython » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

DougN7 wrote: post #433

bsuvc wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’ve recently become friends with someone from the inner city “hood”. It’s just unbelievable. Like someone below said, it’s not about race as much as poverty. The sad thing from what I’ve seen is the culture is self-destructive. Instead of trying to help each other up and out, many pull others back down (economically, socially, etc). I used to naively think I had answers, but after seeing the breath and depth of the…

Lowkey I think the current education system has evolved from communities that allowed teachers to beat their kids to teach obedience. that obedience was passed down through generations in those communities establishing a culture of obedience for teachers. The current system, although non-violent, is still heavily leveraging the culture of obedience from students. when a kid is disobedient, usually the above mentioned communities threaten to move the kid into an environment where the obedience culture is even more strict as a result of even more violent punishment historically. Early days Public school teachers might lightly smack you with a ruler, early catholic school teachers might spank you, and early military school teachers might straight up beat the shit out of you.

So I think by extending the current system to areas in poverty that do not have an established culture of obedience means we have to either change the system or start beating kids again imo. I vote for the former, obviously.

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

#654

Post by somedude895 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #551

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…

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

There was a peasant / worker revolt in 1905, which led to the Tsar implementing some democratic institutions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution

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

#655

Post by MockObject » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #579

commandlinefan wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Equality of outcome is not the goal of equity. They actually say that it is - have you seen the famous comic where the three guys are watching the baseball game but the short guy can't see through the fence? They literally are saying the equity of outcome is the beginning and the end of their goals.

We clearly have different interpretations of that metaphor. The point is to demonstrate agency over the systems we create. What’s the flip side of that scenario? People aren’t given stools to stand on and tall people get to watch while short people don’t? Who built the fence? Why is it that height? Why aren’t there bleachers? Is just sitting there doing nothing equality of opportunity somehow?

That cartoon literally ends with the resolution of all three heads being at the same height. It's depicting the equality of their outcomes. And it's hailing it as the goal to be achieved. The point isn't that stools are handed out demonstrating agency, but that they're handed out with the goal of outcome equality.

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

#656

Post by ken47 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

ceeplusplus wrote: post #603

ken47 wrote: post #588

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. Thi…

Ironically, equality of outcome is actually easier to realize, because you can just drag everyone down to the same crappy level by state mandate and call it "equity". True equality of opportunity would require the admission that certain cultures glorify things which are not conducive to academic success. We accept that black culture values athletics (and that this creates outsized athletic success for black people),…

What you describe is not equality of outcome. If you impose some kind of lifestyle on different people, each of them will have different subjective experiences. Some will be completely content in state A whereas others will be extremely displeased. Are the outcomes equal? No. Simply the conditions.

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

#657

Post by germinalphrase » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #396

HardlyCurious wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make a compelling case that funding matters to outcome you really need to detail how a lack of funding hurts the learning process. Are the teachers bad teachers, and more pay will recruit better teachers? I'm not sure how many teachers enter the profession for the money to be honest. I'm sure they would like pay, but I'm not really of the mind that the curre nt crop of teachers are on average bad. Do kids not have…

> I'm not sure how many teachers enter the profession for the money to be honest Few enter for money, but many leave because of it.

I have been teaching high school English for about ten years. My total comp (including pension matching, cost of employer healthcare contributions, etc) is about 52k.

Money isn’t the reason I will be transitioning into a different career after this school year, but I have friends and contacts floating opportunities that would offer me an immediate 50-80 percent bump.

My wife and I have been saving aggressively to allow for a patient, intentional transition. I don’t expect my next career to feed my values to the same extent, but I am excited to open a new door.

Edit: if you work in Product and would be willing to do a brief informational interview, please reach out. My email is in profile.

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

#658

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:37 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #628

sokoloff wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience suggests that "when more people qualify for gifted programs than can fit in the program, consider slightly raising the qualification level, so you get exactly the class size you're targeting and no one who qualifies was excluded" is the likely path to be chosen.

That presumes some quantifiable, precisely and accurately measurable metric, which does not exist in any context. For example, there is no test in existence that accurately measures "giftedness" in children.

How is qualification already being done today, such that the set of people qualified is larger than the available seats?

Is there no adjustment whatsoever possible to that process? If the people running that process had had a slightly tighter set of criteria, would the outward appearance be dramatically different than the path they took to get to the "slightly too many qualified" condition?

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

#659

Post by ceeplusplus » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #630

ceeplusplus wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math isn't racist. Whether you can pass an Algebra exam is not racist. If Asian kids who can barely read and write English can ace the exam, then so can poor minorities who were raised in the US. You can't claim word problems are suddenly racist when people who can barely read English are still acing them.

From the article: > Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as gifted compared to white students with similar test scores. Anyway, I believe your observation about the relative success that Asian kids have in merit-based programs supports my contention that they are significantly cultural in nature, right?

If hard work and persistence at school is cultural, then sure. Can you describe exactly what you mean by cultural in nature? That 66% number can entirely come from differences in what each culture values - black culture values athletics and music whereas Asian culture values education. And you see that play out in the end product - black people are "overrepresented" in sports and music while Asians are "overrepresented" in academia and STEM. None of these differences make the merit program cultural in nature.

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

#660

Post by car_analogy » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #545

car_analogy wrote: post #494

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.

Yes, both are covered. Studies that specifically look for inconvenient facts don't get funded, and studies that accidentally find them don't get published.