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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

#21

Post by norir »

I think fundamentally the problem is we are trying to fit everything into an industrial, and authoritarian, model of schooling. Students can't be trusted to self learn so we put them into a room, atomize them, strip away almost all of their freedom and force them to learn at the pace of the slowest learner in the group. It's little wonder that acting out is a constant problem.

Gifted programs, while perhaps chipping away at some of the problem don't generally do much about the structural problems in schools and clearly amplify some of their existing biases.

I do not have children but I have given a lot of thought to how terrible our schooling is. I would never want to subject my children to 20 years of what I went through. But the presence or absence of traditional gifted programs is nowhere near the top of my concerns.

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

#22

Post by nostrademons »

Dilettante_ wrote: post #12
dogprez wrote: 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…

>Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family. That's extremely optimistic.

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.

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

#23

Post by User23 »

atomicUpdate wrote: post #14

> 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…

Because the alternative hypothesis to racist teachers is literally unspeakable.

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

#24

Post by marcus0x62 »

dogprez wrote: 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…

> but my take is that we in the 21st century are more bound to the success of our weakest links.

Bound in what way? Gated by? Morally obligated to?

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

#25

Post by recursive »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #20
atomicUpdate wrote: post #14

> 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…

Honest question, you're a first grade teacher in LA. How do you "push back"? Write a tweet?

Cancel your subscription I guess. How are the subscription numbers?

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

#26

Post by sickofparadox »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #20
atomicUpdate wrote: post #14

> 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…

Honest question, you're a first grade teacher in LA. How do you "push back"? Write a tweet?

Have each of your students write a letter to the editors of the LA Times saying it is not nice to imply that you are a bigot.

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

#27

Post by toast0 »

dogprez wrote: 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…

> Gifted children will get the stimulus they need at home via independent study or from their family.

Or by disrupting the rest of the class.

> Splitting gifted kids apart can warp them socially for life too.

Single streaming gifted kids can also warp them socially. Gifted kids in a single stream classroom need to learn to play dumb or become a social pariah. My school district had tracked 1-6, and semi-tracked 7-12. It was a real adjustment leaving the core group where learning and knowledge was appreciated and developed, even if most of the kids in the 'honors/advanced' sections were people I knew from the tracked grade school experience. My child had pullout 'branches' in his current school district 2-4, and AFAIK, it seemed pretty useless; my spouse had a similar pullout program growing up and also reports not getting much out of it, other than a target on their back, socially. Not having a core group supportive of learning gave my kid a lot of trouble in grade 7; although 7-8 is generally a hard time for kids; we're having a lot better experience in 8 at a small private school where the kids all want to learn.

OTOH, I have a cousin who absolutely hated her experience in a tracked system, so I get that too.

There's a bunch of different things all clamoring for more resources in education, and prioritizing is hard, but I think a lot of the conversation in the past few years has been about "why do they get this nice thing? they shouldn't have it" as opposed to "why can't we all have this nice thing" or "how do we make sure selection criteria is not discriminatory".

But I'm pragmatic. Gifted kids can often work more self-directed, so let their class sizes float upwards, and have the other classes float downward.

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

#28

Post by bagels »

resource_waste wrote: post #6

What is the goal for gifted students? Skip a grade and teach them stuff ahead of time (No, their social skills cant handle it apparently) Teach them extended topics... aka waste their time on stuff they can already do. I was able to skip 1 grade in college due to my insistence on taking college classes in high school. Everyone from parents to teachers were against it. Had a random adult I met working tell me about it…

My gift for learning ahead in high school was to sit in the office for an hour each day, not learning, but instead helping with administrative work against my will, lest I get a bad grade on "we don't know what to do with you" time.

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

#29

Post by influx »

resource_waste wrote: post #6

What is the goal for gifted students? Skip a grade and teach them stuff ahead of time (No, their social skills cant handle it apparently) Teach them extended topics... aka waste their time on stuff they can already do. I was able to skip 1 grade in college due to my insistence on taking college classes in high school. Everyone from parents to teachers were against it. Had a random adult I met working tell me about it…

The factory model of education made sense in the industrial era, but it's increasingly anachronistic in an age of personalized technology. We have the tools to dynamically adjust curriculum difficulty and pacing based on each student's capabilities - similar to how modern video games seamlessly adapt to player skill levels.

Instead, we're still forcing students into rigid cohorts based mainly on age, effectively optimizing for the statistical mean while leaving both ends of the ability distribution poorly served. This is particularly wasteful with gifted students who could be advancing much faster if the system accommodated their pace of learning.

The tech to deliver adaptive education at scale exists today. The main barriers are institutional inertia and perhaps a misguided egalitarian impulse that confuses equality of opportunity with enforced uniformity of outcomes. We should embrace the natural variation in human capabilities and build systems that help each student reach their potential, rather than constraining everyone to march in lockstep.

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

#30

Post by philipov »

csa wrote: 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…

While I may have sympathy for your more substantive points, anytime I hear someone mention virtue signalling, it makes it sound like they're virtue signalling. Better to just not bring up that dog whistle.
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