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)

#881

Post by Jtype » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

Jarwain wrote: post #90

chernevik wrote: post #57

"eighth grade Algebra I classes and gifted education programs that disproportionately exclude Black and brown children" The absence of "Black and brown children" doesn't mean they were _excluded_, it means they weren't _selected_, or never applied in the first place. If they were deliberately not selected because of their race, that's wrong and should be fixed pronto. And what are the odds of that? If they were not s…

> Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as gifted compared to white students _with similar test scores_. Black, Latinx, and Native American students are far less likely to attend a school that even offers a gifted program. Emphasis mine. The likely thing going on is something subconscious or unintentionally discriminatory, or somehow related to the home family life.

Ironically, this shows that we should be focusing more on test results and less on other factors, which is the opposite of the current movement.

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

#882

Post by silicon2401 » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

user_7832 wrote: post #735

silicon2401 wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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? If someone were to not have read the above comments, this argument could be very easily used to support the opposing (political) stance as well. I suppose most humans are just emotion driven - though this need not be a bug.

My comment applies to everybody from every political party/religion/etc who bases their decisions on dogma rather than reason.

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

#883

Post by thegrimmest » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #874

thegrimmest wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's psychopathic or fascist to expect that individuals be able to sustain themselves. Nor do I believe it's right to enslave the collective in order to provide a cushion on which those who fail to do so may land. I don't think it just to mandate the protection of people from the full consequences of their own misfortune, failure, or inadequacy. This is the domain of (voluntary) charity. If you take a h…

Individuals can sustain themselves without needing to be forced to spend their entire childhoods attending educational institutions. There is proof of this everywhere. The vast majority of humans throughout history never engaged in such a system, and plenty of contemporary humans don't either. What is your ideology?

> The vast majority of humans throughout history never engaged in such a system

It's true, in previous eras children were put straight to work as soon as they were useful. This has been true in every agrarian society across all cultures. Society increased in complexity to the point that it's quite hard to become an independent adult if you go straight to work as a young child, hence the need for an education. However the goal has always been the same: condition yourself (skills, mindset, habits, behaviour, etc.) as required to become a functional, independent contributor to society.

What is new and unusual is the idea that children should have a "childhood" of recreation, protected from the realities of work and life.

Attending an educational institution as a child is much preferable to working on a farm, or in a mine, don't you think?

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

#884

Post by 0des » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

chucksta wrote: post #674

0des wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any time you feel your hands touch your hips, and your sentence begins to start with the word "so", just stop what youre doing and go have a snickers.

At least my post is relevant to the topic, not just critiquing someone for being hangry

how are your hands both simultaneously on your hips and the keyboard at the same time?

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

#885

Post by TimPC » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

zeroimpl wrote: post #803

TimPC wrote: post #35

Gifted programs are extremely important and the width of American gifted programs is a virtue. Canada has a much higher standard for gifted, and in Ontario we generally admit roughly the top 1% of students (many American programs cater to the top 10%). There a number of large benefits to gifted, not the least of which is it changes the character of a program/school. If you are surrounded by bright students with nerdy…

I was in a gifted program but it was poorly executed and I deem it to have been detrimental to my growth. I was randomly pulled from normal classes in order to hang out with a few other gifted students and do weird puzzles or whatever. Then later I’d have to figure out from classmates what I missed, including what homework to do etc. My social skills already sucked, and being labeled as special to the classmates whom…

Dedicated gifted classes are the correct way to do these programs. I agree being pulled from an existing class for a bit of enrichment while having to make up everything you missed is not a good way to deliver programs.

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

#886

Post by havblue » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #722

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…

Now you are talking not only about a redistribution of taxed dollars but charitable time and donations from parents that want to give them to their children to less advantaged children. Putting limits on how much a parent can help and support their child is a much more difficult ethical and political argument to make

The goal of a lot of the redistricting and ending of accelerated programs seems simple: put higher performing students in the same class as lower performing students. Then make the parents of the higher performing students responsible for everyone.

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

#887

Post by nkrisc » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #880

nkrisc wrote: post #262

Earlier 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…

I understand you have a strong believe that public good is not for profit, but this simplistic view is patently wrong. Public good and profit are not two things contradictory to each other. It is just very common in the market that businesses serve both profit goal and public good. It is 90% about how the world improves in a market dominant system. There is something fundamentally wrong in your worldview of the socie…

Profit is not a goal of public education. Education is the goal of public education. It should be the singular goal.

Yes, my belief is that public education is a cost borne collectively by a society. We take some of our profit and spend it on public education, it does not produce profit.

Yes, we should care how our money is spent in pursuit of public education. I'm not advocating waste. But the question we should ask is whether the money we spend results in a worthwhile education for students.

It is my experience that public good typically loses to profit when contradicts the other.

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

#888

Post by mlyle » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

malloryerik wrote: post #829

nine_k wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is deeper. The traditional grade-based school is not good. It pushes some kids, and stymies other kids. Slicing kids in thin same-age layers is not good, especially for teenagers who cannot form reasonable social structures and end up with gangs and a group of outcasts. A more reasonable school, after the elementary level, should mix and match kids, so that older kids with more advanced skills could help…

What about "flipped" classes, where students learn independently with electronic media, so at whatever speed and level they can handle, while teachers support them by reviewing their work, mentoring and tutoring?

Flipping classes is interesting, but it has problems.

Even trying to rely on outside media, it's still much more labor intensive for teachers.

And you need a more motivated student body than the typical middle school or high school student. The small quizzes you include to make sure that students consumed the flipped content beg for exploiting and cheating, even with randomization.

Finally, it's not really clear how well it works. In general, K-8th work away from teacher supervision shows no evidence of benefit, and the educational research we have on the flipped model is mostly of poor quality except for a couple of good studies of undergraduates.

Education tends to have big "trendy ideas" that have some plausibility that they'll work and excitement around them and a whole lot of administrator support and profe$$ional development services spring up around them. And then you have people endlessly debate the merits based on personal experience.

(I'm about to teach a microeconomics class where I'm going to flip 1/3rd of the lessons in a private high school environment with a relatively motivated student body; the motivation is so that I can fit more simulations into an already-very-dense AP curriculum without an infinite homework load. I've become a relatively successful middle school teacher of engineering and mathematics enrichment classes over the past couple of years and I struggle to see how I can flip much successfully-- so much of my success is around social pressures that come from interaction of students with each other and their teacher).

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

#889

Post by mlyle » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

charrondev wrote: post #835

User23 wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children of the “same” age in school can be 11 months and 30 days apart in age. That is absolutely huge during the grade school years. In fact, month of birth is a significant factor in student athletic success. And when it comes to physical bullying, yes it’s generally the larger more physically mature kids doing the bullying.

Athletics is a pretty poor excuse for hampering a child’s education. Athletics should be separate from schooling and run by the community (as is Europe).

"In fact, month of birth is a significant factor in student athletic success."

This was not an argument for school athletics. It was an observation that age quantization-- whether by schools or by private athletic leagues-- makes a big difference on the trajectory of athletes. In turn, you have from age quantization alone pretty big physical differences in students of the same nominal age.

Your comment is completely orthogonal to what you replied to.

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

#890

Post by mlyle » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

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.

I've helped some students that are struggling in secondary math.

They tend to have a surprisingly good handle on the specific topic being studied that they're failing. I can have them tell me what to do on a problem on the whiteboard, and do all the arithmetic and simpler things for them, and they're flawless.

They also tend to have problems in arithmetic and in getting confused on simpler concepts. Context switching is expensive and they lose working memory of the higher order task, and then make silly mistakes.

Most outside tutors work to try and solidify the higher level topic even further, by drilling the heck out of it... this conceals the problem for it to reappear on next unit. (And, it ossifies the new knowledge in a way that compounds the problem for next year).

I don't like the whole "layer cake" model of teaching math that "builds" upon other math in the way we do in the US. But to some extent, it is justified in places. If you struggle with basic arithmetic and integers, algebra is much, much harder.