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)

#751

Post by _gabe_ » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #741

_gabe_ wrote: post #629

I would have loved to continue reading this, but he immediately claimed that "Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as gifted compared to white students with similar test scores". I clicked the link that supposedly contained the paper to back this up. The link takes you here[0]. That's a bit annoying since it doesn't take me directly to the source, but that's fine. Then I read the article and it says: "…

> A black student whose test scores were on par with a white peer was still half as likely to be assigned to a gifted classroom. ... Which would indeed be explained by the lack of gifted program at schools (can't assign a kid to a class that doesn't exists). But there's also something the authors are omitting here: parental involvement. It's still the parent's decision to place their kid in a gifted program. And if t…

I completely agree. There's definitely visible disparity in many aspects of life between different races in America, and I wish people would stop jumping to the conclusion that it must be because of racism. If we actually want to solve this issue and help our neighbors and communities, we need to be looking for the true problems.

Parental involvement seems to be a large problem, as well as the lack of access to gifted programs in this case.

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

#752

Post by chongli » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #635

chongli wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

school administrators can choose an "older" test to purposefully get biased results Do you have any evidence of school administrators choosing "older" tests with biased questions about tennis scores or whatever other cultural trivia rich white kids are most likely to know about? I took an IQ test when I was a kid (early 90's) and it was a bunch of abstract questions involving mental rotations of objects, determining…

You can look at the history of IQ tests to see that older ones were indeed biased. New tests are designed to counteract those biases. The point is that it is possible for corrupt administrators to bias test results, and the methods to do such are fairly easy to come across. I'm not objecting to IQ tests, just pointing out that if a school wanted to create a test that only admitted certain students, that it is very po…

I know that old IQ tests (and other tests) were biased and used in racist ways. What I asked is whether there is any evidence of school administrators using those old biased tests in recent times. Otherwise this is just speculation.

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

#753

Post by raegis » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #237

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> I agree that it is unacceptable to have eighth grade Algebra I classes and gifted education programs that disproportionately exclude Black and brown children. But if equity is the goal, we should be mandating that every eighth grader takes Algebra I—and then structure the entire pre-K to seventh grade student experience to ensure this is a legitimate possibility for every child. Since when does equity mean everyone…

Algebra I at 8th grade would have placed you a year behind when I was in school. 7th grade was Algrebra 1, Algebra 2 was 8th, Geometry was 9th (first year of highschool). 10th grade had Trig, 11th had pre-Calc, and Calculus was the final year.

I took Algebra 1 in 9th grade, and Algebra 2 and Geometry in the 10th grade. The 9th graders in my Algebra 2 class (who took Algebra 1 in 8th grade) had holes in their algebra background because middle school algebra is taught at a lower level than high school algebra. But I wasn't behind, for I took AP Calculus in 11th grade successfully because of a strong foundation from high school level algebra classes. However, I'm struggling with placement choices for own children as we speak.

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

#754

Post by chmod600 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #732

whatevenisthat wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why can't we just admit it and quit trying to make people who are unique the same?" Because we are dealing with a group which is motivated by ideology. It's a religion to them. Some of them have doubled down on woke-speak around "equity" for so long, that they cannot backtrack and accept that merit and performance exist. Doing this would put them at odds with their current in-group and likely their only source of…

> Because we are dealing with a group which is motivated by ideology. It's a religion to them. There really is no simpler way to say it than this, and it raises the question: how do you even make progress with a group who bases decisions on dogma rather than reason?

First, recognize that "reason" is somewhat narrower than we'd like to believe. Our own reasoning is applied when convenient and suppressed when convenient. And many times there is simply too much complexity and you must rely on wisdom instead.

The reason that "reason" often wins is because it often works. Of course, sometimes it either doesn't work, or takes a long time to work, and we can conveniently ignore it. Eventually reality catches up, but not always in a way that illustrates the cause.

The best way to make reason work is to expose people making decisions to reality, such that they benefit or lose based on the quality of their reasoning. The most unreasonable people will all of a sudden become very reasonable.

Alternatively stated, prevent people from hiding from reality. There are many places to hide, and these are often the most unreasonable places. National politics is one: your ideas probably won't happen (even if you're in Congress), and if they do, and something bad happens, there are enough other factors to make it easy to blame something else. Academia is another such place. So is extended adolescence.

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

#755

Post by bsder » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #3

> I agree that it is unacceptable to have eighth grade Algebra I classes and gifted education programs that disproportionately exclude Black and brown children. But if equity is the goal, we should be mandating that every eighth grader takes Algebra I—and then structure the entire pre-K to seventh grade student experience to ensure this is a legitimate possibility for every child. Since when does equity mean everyone…

> Why can't we just admit it and quit trying to make people who are unique the same?

Because that would be an admission that we can't just pile 30 students in the same class and in doing so would mean that we need more teachers and nobody wants to spend the money to do that.

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

#756

Post by derac » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #715

derac wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's only 'extremely inflammatory racial language' if you pluck it out of its context and misquote it. 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. This is pretty vanilla, nearly tautological stuff unless you believe academic talent is some sort of inher…

Yeah, that's fair. Maybe I was being overly sensitive.

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

#757

Post by sealaska » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:35 PM UTC

thegrimmest wrote: post #697

zozbot234 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> School was never meant to be "engaging". That's backwards. A school that doesn't engage its students has failed at its most important goals, and the very best schools have always striven to be engaging. Often this was done in unconventional ways, such as directing the youngest students to memorize their pre-set "lessons" word for word and be able to literally chant them back to the teacher. Similarly "direct" yet e…

I guess we're circling around this question: Should schools bend to the natural tendencies of students, or should students bend to the rigours and structure of academic life? Given that society itself doesn't bend much, I'm inclined towards the latter.

Do you think kids should have recess? If so, for what purpose?

Or, what do you think of Montessori education?

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

#758

Post by erichocean » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #517

MockObject wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does social determination include culture? That's a greater determinant of outcomes than skin color, as the example of outcomes between African Americans and Nigerian immigrants indicates.

Culture is socially determined in the sense that culture is simply the collective actions and decisions that a group of people make. Reading the intent behind that statement, though, that Nigerians have succeeded in America despite any hinderances they may have faced due to wider societies treatment of black people, that would be somewhat outside of the framework of what I am talking about. The construction here is,…

> do Black Americans have worse outcomes […]

Black Americans do not have worse outcomes.

Specifically, given the distribution of individuals in the group "Black Americans" across all socially relevant dimensions—including culture—individual Black Americans have identical* outcomes to similarly-situated individuals of every other group in America including Whites, Asians, etc.

As you would expect in a country with equal opportunity for all, both legally and culturally.

*Black Americans actually do better than expected because there's an enormous cultural push to promote Black Americans whenever possible—college admissions, management, etc. not to mention Black Americans being so over-represented in media that most Americans think the country is around 40% Black whereas the actual number is ~13%, i.e. they're off by a factor of 3.

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

#759

Post by wbsss4412 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #744

wbsss4412 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equality of outcome is not the goal of equity. That’s a straw man argument created by its detractors. People point out disparities as evidence that there aren’t equal opportunities in society. The conservative position is simply to assert that equality of opportunity exists cuz America, and if you question that you are a communist who just wants everyone to be the same.

I'm all for equity of opportunity. However, the people California has chosen to set our curriculum are explicitly working toward equality of outcome. They say they don't believe that any children are more talented than any other children, and are advocating eliminating standard "advanced" courses, such as calculus, from the high school curriculum. The only classes that would be available in their proposal are the cur…

I’m not intimately familiar with all of the details of what is being advocated in California. All I can speak to is my perspective on what equity is and how I think it should be applied.

People who disagree with the basic concepts around equity tend to view the entire discourse as a monolith, but people are actually allowed to have different opinions on what is actually equitable and what isn’t.

Personally I wouldn’t support doing away with advanced math courses either. But just because someone does that in the name of equity, doesn’t mean I think equity itself is bad. I’m able to separate the two.

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

#760

Post by jacobolus » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

rand85632 wrote: post #647

jacobolus wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Take almost any “academically gifted” student and start looking into their biography, and you’ll find a shitload of preparation. As a general rule (to which, sure, you can find rare exceptions if you really hunt) the more “gifted” the student, the more hands-on help and attention from experts they had. Even for those without significant expert help, the “gifted” students are the ones who spent a ton more time thinking about the subject than their peers for whatever reason. The international math olympiad winners I took courses with in college were incredibly well prepared, and while clever and hard working, are by no means superhuman.

Preparation is not the only relevant factor that goes into what gets called academic “giftedness”, but it’s the vast majority of it.

It’s similar for other fields. Nobody can compete in sport at a world-class level nowadays without significant amounts of excellent coaching. Etc.

For instance, the reason my kid learned to read before he was 4 and most of his peers did not is because we spent many hundreds of hours reading books together aloud, and maybe 50 hours over 6 months on direct instruction in reading per se. Not because he’s biologically any different than his peers. The reason he’s really good at making stuff out of Legos is that he really likes it and spends hours per week doing it, not because he’s some kind of Lego prodigy. He’s not particularly skilled at drawing or dancing or playing the guitar or sewing, because those are things he did not practice very much yet.