291–300 of 553 posts
The best school I ever attended divided classes between academic (attended at one's grade level) and social (attended at one's age level) --- some teachers were accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and once one had finished a subject through 12th grade, one could begin taking college courses --- many students were awarded 4-year college degrees along with their high school diploma when graduating. The Mississip…
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…
Did people read the article? There's actually some interesting points about how gifted/advanced curriculum isn't always the solution. I'd have to agree. I went to a magnet school, so already presumably for "gifted" students, that in turn had advanced courses like honors or AP. And while there were students who genuinely benefited, myself included, it also became a game of getting into the most advanced course so you…
I had a very different (and much more positive) experience with G&T. I went to my local public school in rural Pennsylvania. In PA schools are required to write an IEP for "gifted" students. There are a couple of metrics, but the main one is anyone who tests > 130 on an IQ test. I remember taking a test in 2nd or 3rd grade (I was terrified of authority figures as a kid, so I have no idea how they accurately give thes…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What we oughta do is make a system where state education funding is equally distributed (per student capita) to all the schools in a state. Local funding by property taxes, while not most of the funding for schools, also needs to go. We also oughta try and tackle the administrative bloat on a federal level to get more of that money going to things that directly help students. I agree equality of outcome is a hopeless…
my wife has been teaching for about 15 years and i have one kid in HS and one in middle school. Adding money to a bad school makes it worse, we've seen it time and time again. The only time we've ever seen a school stop the downward spiral and turn around is when the neighborhood gentrifies or becomes hip and new people move there, have kids, and get involved and start holding feet to fire via school board and distri…
This is also funding related. Yes, it takes time to turn things around and there needs to be oversight. No, withholding funds from failing schools wont' work. It's like beating people until they are happy.
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…
If it was that simple I'm sure we would have seen it already. I imagine any gifted program, and you can imagine it in any way you like, will inevitably promote a majority from a certain group, thus by definition will be a target for every discrimination complaint - because basically it will be supporting and pumping more money to an already privileged group. So somebody has to decide: either targeted to constant fuss…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Second generation immigrant children from first generation parents sounds like the American Dream working as-intended to me! If your definition of the American dream is the tiny fraction of poor Asian kids that get into Stanford you have a screwed up definition of the American dream, which is built on people that go to Cal State LA and never had G&T programs. > This can simply mean being a functional member of soci…
I'm not following your hyper focus on first gen Asian kids or the implication that gifted programs are only for Stanford-bound students. My ancestors have been in North America since the 16-1800s, I went to public K12 and university, and I've benefited quite a bit from having parts of my education that weren't a complete joke (I've done much better economically than my parents, for example). Teaching high-aptitude ki…
The problem is that A. they called it "gifted" so people thought it was something you _wanted_ your kids to be and B. the screening test they used was the IQ test, which you can massively improve your score on by studying for it. So parents were determined to get their kids into "gifted" education, and coached their kids on the tests to get in, and in the meantime kids from less-privileged backgrounds with the same characteristics were being labeled as behavioral problems and shunted into remedial programs.
Now that we have the label of "neurodivergent", it seems to me it would be productive to reframe "gifted" education as "neurodivergent" education: rich parents would stop trying to get their kids into it, and it would be able to serve the kids it was intended to serve.
Did people read the article? There's actually some interesting points about how gifted/advanced curriculum isn't always the solution. I'd have to agree. I went to a magnet school, so already presumably for "gifted" students, that in turn had advanced courses like honors or AP. And while there were students who genuinely benefited, myself included, it also became a game of getting into the most advanced course so you…
> a magnet school, so already presumably for "gifted" students, that in turn had advanced courses like honors or AP. I too attended a magnet school, but the point of magnet schools were not actually for 'gifted' students. While many did offer advanced classes or programs, the goal was to influence racial desegregation by offering programs to encourage white students to attend black majority schools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you replying to my comment with this? It has no relevance to anything I wrote. But since you did, I’d suggest you consider not only the value system of the victims but also that of the perpetrators and the system itself. And also consider the history. And consider the financial differences that often exist. Consider the communities and their plights. Consider destruction of cultures. Consider the dietary and…
> Why are you replying to my comment with this? It has no relevance to anything I wrote. You emphasized systemic racism as being a major cause, but group differences can be both non-biologic and NOT related to systemic racism > not only the value system of the victims but also that of the perpetrators and the system itself. This assumes the answer (systemic racism) in the premise. The values of the system can be good…
Firstly, I did not. I simply pointed out that racism can be systemic without individual contribution.
Secondly, the fact that racism can arise from a third option (neither non systemic and non biologic) does not change the fact that the article did not accuse teachers of racism.
And that’s where my initial comment stopped.
As for the rest, I had hoped it would have made it clear that the issue is too complex to unravel and try to assign blame or cause. The factors are too nuanced, the history too complex, the societies and neighborhoods too diverse.
But for some reason, you seem to have a need to find a cultural- or values- based factor for differing outcomes. You can do that if you wish. I won’t partake though. (Still not sure why you even chose my comment to initiate such an attempt)
Edit: I should state that the experience of non-immigrant blacks, in the US, is entirely incomparable to that of either Asians or Ashkenazi or even Nigerians.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you missed this relevant (albeit, unspecific) fragment when you extracted the quote: > with a millennia of discredited science to back it up
But you mentioned that a test was taken. Is the test somehow unscientific? Is it rigged to favor white kids? Are you speaking of a hypothetical test that doesn't exist and was never applied? If a test was actually taken, and it is not rigged, how can it not be a sort of scientific evidence?