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California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

latimes.com

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Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#101
post #35

I had to leave California so my gifted child could get a proper education. Now he's getting it, while I'm paying roughly half in property taxes.

Can you share more details? Where have you moved to? What alternatives did you consider?

I moved to Forsyth County, GA, where my child has access to excellent computer science and musical education (not to mention AP classes and 3 tiers bases on student achievement). In fact, he didn't make it to the top tier in everything because they were just too strong. This is a good thing!

In his supposedly "10" California school, music had been defunded to spread equality to other school systems; also, no career emphasis programs or special tracks were available.

I considered moving to one of the Dallas suburbs, but I like the Southeast weather and setting better.

Note: I'm "Latino", whatever that means, and my son is mixed (my wife is a snow white American) with a "Latino" last name.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#102
My take that seems to never get cold: let kids skip grades. Anything I hear against this runs into the wall of the lived experience of several people I know including mine. It’s fine! And it doesn’t have to be permanent: if a kid doesn’t thrive in the next grade, put them back! Then everyone at grade level gets grade level resources and teachers get students at the right level of knowledge. Having to homeschool or pay for private school to get this simple experience is wild to me.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links only because they can vote > Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students: - whose parents may not even know anything about the field that the student is interested in - whose parents may see higher education as a waste of time or have…

> This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students: - whose parents may not even know anything about the field that the student is interested in - whose parents may see higher education as a waste of time or have other anti-intellectual views like a sizeable chunk of the US Why are you assuming that because the parents are poor they are automatically ignorant or anti-intellectual?

poorer kids will be more affected by family attitudes because they will be less likely to be in a well funded school system with sufficient support for gifted kids

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#104

> There’s little doubt that racism played a role in identifying children as gifted even though the label was based on supposedly objective criteria. Why has the LA Times settled on racist teachers as the only reason for the skew in enrollment numbers, and why aren’t teachers upset the LA Times are calling them racists? I’m constantly surprised how often accusations like this are thrown around and how little pushback…

>> There’s little doubt that racism played a role in identifying children as gifted even though the label was based on supposedly objective criteria > Why has the LA Times settled on racist teachers as the only reason… Notice how the extracted quote (and the article itself) never actually accuses teachers of racism? The accusation only appears in your complaint. Systemic racism can exist without overt individual raci…

But why assign any specific value to systemic racism vs some groups value family + education more than others. Poor Asian families suffered a lot of discrimination (and still do) but their kids do well in these tests. Ashkenazi suffered a ton of discrimination especially early/mid 20th century but still did extremely well academically. I am not even saying they are inherently smarter, I’m just saying that their value system is demonstrably different, they suffered obvious discrimination, and yet had significantly above average educational outcomes.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#105
post #10

It’s not just California, but California may be one of the more egregious state neglecters. The push at the state level for policies that focus on equality of outcomes over equality of opportunities will not end well for the gifted and talented communities. Whenever I hear these people talk about their policies, I can’t help but recall Harrison Bergeron. Focusing on equality of outcomes in a society that structurally…

I don't have much experience with how education works in California, or in the US in general. But there is one universal issue with special programs for gifted kids: parents. It's hard to distinguish gifted kids from average kids with ambitious parents. If you let ambitious parents push their kids to programs they are not qualified for, they can easily ruin the programs for the actual gifted kids. Gifted programs wor…

Naming the programs gifted and creating a gifted identity is the core issue. Instead, call it something like asynchronous development, and place kids in classes appropriate to their pace of development.

I'm hopeful that AI can offer highly individualized education to each kid, and get around this issue entirely.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#106

This is what happens when you push equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. Everyone gets the same crappy outcome. Freedom is inherently unequal.

Equality of outcome could even eventually lead to an objectively worse outcome for society as a whole when on a larger time scale due to holding back brilliant minds. Those who were clearly brilliant and may have been entirely capable of pushing societal, technological, medical etc. advances forward in a larger time scale are held back, stifled, or even in cases of things like affirmative action (which I believe shou…

> have been denied of opportunity to go on and do great things.

Well, if they’re so brilliant…

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#107
As an alum of gifted programs with many friends who were also alums, I think most of us would say, "good riddance". In fact, I'm pretty sure the strongest haters of gifted programs I know are people who used to be in them.

For most of us, the reality was that our status as relatively studious kids created a situation where our area of greatest need was social-emotional development, not intellectual development. Gifted programs mostly served as easy, almost dismissive solution for our parents, who would rather see our very real social-emotional challenges as further evidence of our intellectual excellence and the importance of separating us from our peers so they won't "hold us back."

Quite the opposite. Being in class with my friends is what kept me emotionally grounded, and being separated from them, in a way that sends a clear message to everyone involved (including me) that it needed to happen because I was somehow too good to be in the same classes as them, did lasting harm. Even now my lifelong best friend is obnoxiously deferential to me on all sorts of subjects because he sees me as "the smart one" instead of a more sensible perspective like "the one who happens to enjoy math."

But I did move around as a kid enough times to see a few different ways of doing this sort of thing, so I can say with certainty what does work, and it works well for everyone involved: flipped classrooms. It's magical. In a group where kids who have mixed skill levels on a particular subject are asked to support each other instead of competing with each other, they do just that. And I can say from experience that it's a much better way to make a classroom more challenging for kids who do better in that subject. Helping your peers understand a tricky subject is a much more interesting intellectual challenge - and builds more useful life skills - than an artificially "accelerated" learning program ever will be. And it's better for long-term learning, too, because it helps build even stronger foundations of understanding.

And I am also seeing, now that my kids are in a school that uses flipped classroom teaching, that it's better for everyone else, too. My younger child, who has been having trouble with reading, gets an immense amount of value from being able to pair with friends who are stronger readers.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#108
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the gifted and talented communities. As in gifted and talented individuals who form a community, or all these folks from this ethnic background you think are talented? Because if it's the former then I'm surprised they've got a community going, and if it's the latter you would be better served getting the calipers out and go measure some skulls instead to promote that nonsense.

> As in gifted and talented individuals who form a community, or all these folks from this ethnic background you think are talented? Because if it's the former then I'm surprised they've got a community going "A recent analysis in Nature caused a stir by pointing out that the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners belong to the same academic family. Of 736 researchers who have won the Big Recognition, 702 group togethe…

> [0]: Yes, scientific progress depends on like a thousand people https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/yes-scientific-pro...

I agree with your overall message but it's those thousand people and the hundreds of thousands ( maybe millions ) of people who make the scientific progress possible. It takes a community and an infrastructure to turn a scientific discovery into scientific progress.

Like it took thousands or millions of people to take the discoveries of von Neumann, Church, Turing, etc into something worthwhile.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#109
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well-off gifted kids will get the stimulus they need at home. Poor gifted kids are out of luck. And thus, the policy serves to entrench socioeconomic disadvantage in the name of making everybody equal.

I don't believe it. Almost every kid in America has access to the internet, a public library and a teacher. How many don't have access to any of those? That's a different problem.

But they often don't have an easy way to get to the library, or a quiet place where they can sit and watch a Youtube tutor, or even a trusted authority who tells them that all of this is worth their time.

Re: California's most neglected group of students: the gifted ones

#110
post #2

She makes some good points, but my take is that we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links. Our world has become so complicated, one small mistake can have dire consequences. So, it's the state's priority to spend its limited resources helping those struggling to tread water. Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family. I know since…

> we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links only because they can vote > Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family This is definitely not true for poorer gifted students: - whose parents may not even know anything about the field that the student is interested in - whose parents may see higher education as a waste of time or have…

>only because they can vote

Domain specificity of "weak link"-hood, as well as the compounding of innocuous, sub-symptomatic "weak links":

Carpenter Tom is a hard-worker, great husband, and community leader. And he voted for an autocrat, against his explicit interests (benefits from ACA, benefits from undocumented immigrant labor, benefits from special-ed resources for his kids) because he dislikes keeping abreast of current events (poor reading speed) and made his decision based on a misunderstanding predicated by, essentially, a game of telephone across his personal network that warped facts about the candidates.

He's a "weak link" on the subject that counts - the matter of the vote - but otherwise an upstanding member of the community. You're going to disenfranchise him?

I sympathize with the rest of your comment. I do think it's a bit naive to think that these programs help even of a fraction of the poor kids they should be reaching. They seem to mostly be a way to section off semi-affluent kids in "lesser" schools (e.g., parents who can't move for work or family reasons).

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