I think in a few decades people will be looking back at the obsession over achievement and academics as something weird. People learn and achieve in different paces, and, assuming a lifetime of continuous opportunity for learning (as we have today), the metrics of specific ages are obsolete things.
Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
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Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#12[deleted]
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#13Interesting - I went to a tracked high school. The advanced track kids were expected to take a bunch of AP exams at the ends of their tracks. I was in advanced but didn't always like it - there were really some gunners in these courses blowing Calc BC out of the water. That said, there is NO WAY every kid in high school is BC calc ready - so clearly at some point people are getting to choose what classes to take?
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#14When I was in elementary school we had this program called GATE and basically it was like once a month you go to a different school with other GATE students from the other schools in the district. There would be special classes like oceanography, robotics, etc. I don't think it added any value into my life ever except variety of experience. I also think it made other students who weren't in it feel kind of bad becaus…
I agree this likely would have been better for the rest of the students if they too had individualized targeted classes to experience.
That'd be a great time for those with strong prospects in sports to receive individualized education with outside coaches/players from those fields.
It'd also be a great time for students at risk academically to secretly have tutoring and targeted coverage of core subjects they might be struggling with.
However I'm much more hopeful for actually personalized education; like turning school in to more of an MMO-RPG class system where assignments are like the quests in a game and participation on larger projects has real world commons / civic infrastructure improvements. Real mentor-ship and problems in the real world would give practical application to education that I feel would make retention much stronger.
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#15The author is a professor at Stanford. If separating gifted children has no benefits, why doesn't Stanford admit students at random?
Because IQ is only loosely correlated with actual achievement? College admissions generally care about achievement (grades, awards, activities, extra-curriculars, etc.), diversity, and likelihood to be a successful student who later donates money back to the school. IQ is not a great predictor of these outcomes since there are a lot of high-IQ individuals who don't really apply themselves.
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#16Educational bureaucrats are compromised dregs and monsters.
Their paymasters want high-value cogs. Gifted program is there to preserve the value. The rest of the program is there to reduce them to cogs. The result is--at best!--broken people with big bank accounts and nice offices, struggling to fill the void.
In other words, home-school your kids. Give them goals outside of pleasing some salaryperson who doesn't even like them.
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#17I have to say that this result is wildly different from my experience and that of my children. It's boring to sit in class redoing a simple math problem just because someone wants to detrack math. A friend of mine who is a teacher says that he has MORE discipline problems from the smart kids who aren't challenged enough. The real secret should be to embrace independent, computer-mediated systems like Khan Academy. Ev…
> We have the ability to liberate our children to learn at their individual pace
What makes you think society wants to allow that, let alone encourage it?
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#18The author is a professor at Stanford. If separating gifted children has no benefits, why doesn't Stanford admit students at random?
Because IQ is only loosely correlated with actual achievement? College admissions generally care about achievement (grades, awards, activities, extra-curriculars, etc.), diversity, and likelihood to be a successful student who later donates money back to the school. IQ is not a great predictor of these outcomes since there are a lot of high-IQ individuals who don't really apply themselves.
But it answers a wrong question.
Stanford does not admit kids by IQ score. But it does have an entrance exam, as opposed to a lottery among those who applied.
That is, they likely see some value in separating by some measure of aptitude.
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#19The article seems to suggest that issues are less the separation than the messaging and expectations created with it. Personally, I think the goal should be to always encourage and challenge all students, and show all students that working diligently and thoughtfully can pay off.
I know from experience that being in a classroom that functions at the level of the lowest common denominator is basically abusive to everyone else. What would you feel like if you had to spend high school English class reading Dick and Jane out loud, for example? That's what a poor combined class is like for "G&T" students (and I had a couple real rough years when things felt like that). But that's also a far from saying "GATE kids" should always be "tracked" or feel like they're stuck in a particular lane and loaded down with ridiculous expectations.
Re: Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement
#20The author is a professor at Stanford. If separating gifted children has no benefits, why doesn't Stanford admit students at random?
Stanford wants to admit the students who will have the most achievement. Thats very different than measuring the differential achievement of (supposedly comparable) students who were admitted to Stanford and some other school.