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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)

#661

Post by _gabe_ »

jeremyjh wrote: post #13
Bostonian wrote: post #5

"The current population of students we identify as academically gifted and talented is unacceptably whiter and wealthier than the actual student population of academically gifted and talented students should be." A typical IQ threshold for a gifted program is 130. The average IQ overall is 100 with standard deviation 15. For black Americans the average score on IQ tests is about 85, which explains why blacks will be…

Did you read the part where he pointed out that black/brown students are 66% less likely to be in a gifted program with the same test scores ?

I just left a comment as a reply to this post because that statistic intrigued me. I had to go hunting for the actual paper, and when I finally found it it seems to suggest that discrepancy is because the study lumped students who have access to gifted programs with students that don't have access.

Additionally it identified that 83% of black students had access to a gifted program as opposed to 91% or something of white students.

Additionally the study cited says that they had several gaps in their data and used some statistical regressions to fill in those gaps. All this leads me to believe that we need to provide more access to gifted programs, and the problem isn't that we have a herd of racist teachers on the loose.

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

#662

Post by thegrimmest »

jacobolus wrote: post #420
robonerd wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the remedial student? The well-behaved students. Good teachers are wasted on troublemakers and class clowns, regardless of their IQ. And if a dim student who scores poorly on IQ tests knows how to sit quietly and behave themself, I think good teachers will help them a lot.

> Good teachers are wasted on troublemakers and class clowns It is entirely natural for children to “clown around” in a boring setting, and their lack of interest / trouble focusing reflects a societal (and school) failure to make school engaging and give them the appropriate challenges and direct feedback to keep their attention. Many of the greatest human breakthroughs were made by people who were squirmy and distr…

School was never meant to be "engaging". It's not recreation, it's work. The problem seems to be that we've lost the value of working hard and pushing through things we find dull and uninteresting, in order to attain a greater goal. Instead we expect everything to be engaging, stimulating and entertaining. Real world success is not like that - it's work - so better get into the habit early on.

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

#663

Post by annoyingnoob »

skyde wrote: post #318
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…

you are saying school (1,2,3) get same funding per pupil. but test score for 1 is worse than 3. So why send you kid to school 4 instead of school 3 ? Is the test score at school 4 significantly better? I am a parent of a 4 years old, and we recently moved from Canada to USA. Option (4) in Canada is almost non-existent so this is new to me! I have been trying to compare test-score between private schools and public sc…

There are lots of reasons to choose a private school beyond test scores. Things like smaller class sizes, expectations about how students treat each other and staff.

My kids started at private school. A new public school with a STEM/STEAM concept opened near our house. At the public school, the goal of the administration is to fill seats (they get paid based on attendance) and to provide a safe environment - education was at least 3rd on their list if not lower. When covid hit the public school pretty much failed my kids. So we went back to the private school where the kids could actually get an education. My kids were ahead when they transitioned from private to public, they were behind when they transitioned back from public to private. The kids are much happier and tell me that 'everyone at public school is a bully'.

The private school uses different tests than the public school, so its hard to compare. A school where education is important and students are expected to be respectful seems like a great place to start from.

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

#664

Post by hackinthebochs »

UncleMeat wrote: post #169
fein wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look around for the source of this, and I can't find the "with similar test scores" part in the Vanderbuilt site article on the Vanderbuilt study this is based on. It says 66% less likely, but the "similar test scores" part isn't in the same paragraph. I really dislike that it is so difficult to find the source of these statements in modern media, as the news articles I read didn't even cite the study, I had…

> Misleading at best as the "tests" they are talking about are not gifted assessment tests, but rather standardized testing which I don't think is that great of an indicator. I find this to be frustrating. How many times have we heard from people defending the existing systems that standardized testing is an appropriate method of stratifying people. When universities decide to minimize the relevance of the SATs we se…

The test matters. You don't find the top 2% of ability by a test designed to measure competency, for example. This distinction may or may not be relevant in the context of gifted programs within a single school, but it is certainly relevant when comparing the utility of state competency tests and SAT tests.

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

#665

Post by bluGill »

jfk13 wrote: post #417
bluGill wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> a tax break (even if it is only a few cents per resident) is a better use than some programs Very likely so, but which programs exactly? (Are you uniquely well-qualified to make that determination? If not, who is, and how can we know that?)

That is an excellent question. I carefully did not answer it because as soon as I do, no matter how wasteful and useless the program someone will come to defend it and I don't want to get in that fight.

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

#666

Post by protomyth »

jimbob45 wrote: post #250
protomyth wrote: post #14

Equity matters for education, but not the sports teams? If the conversation about gifted and talented programs doesn't include the other activities the school sponsors, then its not fair. We've eliminated voc-ed and now g&t programs. I bet sports cost a bunch.

I'd say I learned much more from the elementary school and middle school sports programs I participated in than I ever learned from the gifted/talented programs I participated in. I find it to be a terrible shame that high school sports are so often limited in participation by elitism (e.g. basketball limited to 10 players, volleyball to ~12, cheerleading to ~20). I would wholeheartedly support removing limits on hig…

Regardless of the usefulness of sports in schools (and I do believe they are useful), you point out that they are "often limited in participation by elitism" much as I suppose the critics of gifted & talented programs would say of those programs. If so, then they must be studied to make sure they don't disproportionately exclude certain racial groups. If racial imbalance is a guideline for cancellation then it should apply to every program and activity.

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

#667

Post by dpbriggs »

zozbot234 wrote: post #191
SoftTalker wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subject categories such as "math" are also very broad. I struggled with math in elementary school, because it was mostly about memorization. 3 + 5 = 8. 6 x 7 = 42. Learning and being able to spit out those facts as quickly and flawlessly as possible was most of what I remember about math as a young kid. I was never good at that. I still am not good at that. I got Cs and sometimes lower grades in math. Somehow, though…

You struggled with math in elementary school because of deeply flawed teaching. Even at that early age, it's not hard to understand that "3 + 5 = 8" is not something that you'd need to literally memorize. Of course, the fact that teaching quality can vary to such an extent is itself noteworthy.

You need some amount of this sort of practice to build numeracy. It's great to represent things in more accessible forms but at the end of the day it's useful for citizens to instantly recognize 3+5=8.

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

#668

Post by whatevenisthat »

dadjoker wrote: post #624

“Since when does equity mean everyone gets nothing?” Unfortunately, in Oregon, Kate Brown and her acolytes think that it is "equitable" to get rid of all basic learning requirements for high school graduation, because they are "white supremacy" or something. The soft bigotry of low expectations. https://www.wsj.com/articles/dumbing-oregon-down-kate-brown-...

No post body was provided.

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

#669

Post by DAlperin »

havblue wrote: post #644
DAlperin wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'.

Having been in public school for most of my life I can say unequivocally: yes. It is not uncommon for teachers to purchase books and classroom supplies out of pocket since there simply is not enough funding.
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