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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

#391

Post by jedberg »

panzagl wrote: post #359
jedberg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be both. Prop 13 is definitely a huge problem, it cut school funding significantly since the 80s. But also the focus on equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. I read a good book a while back that pointed out how much more we spend on special ed, which is aimed at the bottom 5%, compared to what we spend on gifted education, which is the top 5%. It asked why we would spend so much on one and…

Special ed is expensive because it's things like 'this student needs a full time aid'. The only way to decrease it is to basically abandon those children.

Or agree that the top 5% should get the same resources and give each one a private tutor at the same cost.

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

#392

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

> Imho, the only viable/main solution is to acknowledge that we all aren’t equal, we don’t all have access to the same opportunities, but as a country we can implement policies that lessen the imbalance.

But lessening the imbalance is the opposite of what you want.

Say you have $300 to invest in educating one student.

If you invest it in the stupid student, that student will develop $100 of learning, and the imbalance will shrink by a small amount.

If you invest it in the smart student, that student will develop $300 of learning, and the imbalance will grow by a large amount.

Which is better?

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

#393

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

bawolff wrote: post #302
cogman10 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking resources away from those who move society forward and spending them on those who are unlikely to "pay it back" is a way your culture dies. What does this even mean? To me, the measure of a healthy society is how that society treats those that are "unlikely to pay it back". The most unhealthy societies treat unwanted humans as disposable refuse. For example, I don't think we'd call the culture/society of the…

> > Conquerers in the past used this strategy to win massive empires for themselves. > Which conquerers? I can think of no historical example where a conquerer somehow convinced a target to take care of their needy so they could conquer. I think the idea is that conqourers force their conquest economies to fit their needs, which is often not good for the conqoured. E.g. they might try to shutdown industries which bui…

Not exactly the same, but Basil II of eastern Rome had his enemy soldiers blinded after a decisive victory and sent back to Bulgaria to be a burden.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kleidion

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

#394

Post by hintymad »

didibus wrote: post #360
hintymad wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Killing truly progressive programs for the purpose of virtue signaling is a loss for society I wonder if the progressives ever wondered why so many Chinese students or Indian students could excel in the STEM programs of those top universities? Like we grew up with our parents making less than $500 a month in the early 2000s if we were lucky. Heck, a family from countryside or a small town probably made $200 a month…

> Equity my ass I don't understand this statement. You say you were offered access to good teachers, that didn't give up on you because you were poor, or because you had broken English, that's a great example of equity, so like why do you dismiss it at the end?

All those are about equality, namely equal access. I'm totally for that. What I'm not for is manufactured equity, namely equal outcome by force.

You probably know a typical situation in many families: one kid is years ahead of math program without even trying, and another struggles with math no matter hard the parents try but is good at reading and writing. According to the progressive government, the parents should mandate the former kid to learn less math and the latter to do less reading, so they can achieve the same degree of learning. That's just insane.

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

#395

Post by didibus »

roguecoder wrote: post #354
didibus wrote: post #346

Wasn't there something about gifted students not necessarily translating into gifted adults? And that it's just that they are faster to reach a level of development, but doesn't mean they will go beyond the normal limit. Like the rate of development and learning just follows a different curve, but ends up near the same point once an adult. I think it was only some gifted student retain an advantage in adulthood, and…

That's kind of what we would expect to happen in the case where other kids get actual support & "gifted" kids are left to fend for themselves, or even sent to the library to keep them from disrupting everyone else.

That would mean that throughout the last 30 years in many places around the world, gifted kids have never been given what they need to capitalize on their gift? Which maybe...

I can't remember where I saw that in the first place, but I'd assume it would have gone off historical data, and hopefully looked across a few different places. So it might be that we never really supported gifted kids, or it could mean that it's a temporary gift.

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

#396

Post by mlyle »

zozbot234 wrote: post #378
mlyle wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason why these things couldn't be developed in a more "structured" approach than the default (avoiding the overshooting you mention). The quick feedback cycle for every answer is really the most critical point. Again, citations for the efficacy of scripting and recitation would be appreciated. > The quick feedback cycle for every answer is really the most critical point. I agree that quick feedback imp…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow_Through_(project) for starters, one of the largest educational studies ever conducted: "The results of Follow Through did not show how models that showed little or no effects could be improved. But they did show which models—as suggested by the less than ideal conditions of the experiment—had some indications of success. Of these models, Siegfried Engelmann's Direct Instruction me…

Ugh. I was wondering whether it was going to be Follow Through. You understand it was a terribly conducted study, and analyses of the data by other parties have drawn the exact opposite conclusion?

There's a reason why I'm particularly skeptical to what you're saying, btw: we know from pretty high quality research lasting decades that the combination of tutorial instruction plus mastery methods are supremely effective. The big problem is, these approaches don't scale.

Structured recitation in a classroom is basically the opposite of this approach.

On the other hand: Direct Instruction could be a way to hit a minimum quality level in schools which have suffered from instructional quality problems. It's also worth noting that modern Direct Instruction is much, much less recitation-based than you imply.

Just one piece of anecdata: the private school I'm at was much more scripted and regimented around this type of philosophy 15 years ago. The private school down the road is still there. We've really pulled away in performance since broadening methods and doing a lot more of the open-ended inquiry that you look down your nose at. Indeed, the engineering programs that I teach share very few features with DI, and have gotten nationally recognized results.

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

#397

Post by philipov »

cloverich wrote: post #220
hombre_fatal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. It's distracting because it's a low signal quip that asserts that your opponents have no substance behind their views beyond looking good. Just make your argument. Even if this were the rare valid application of it, it's so overused as a low effort attack that the comment is no better off for using it. Finally, we have to contend with the fact that people earnestly believe in the things they say and…

> It's distracting because it's a low signal quip that asserts that your opponents have no substance behind their views beyond looking good. Just make your argument. That is the argument. > Finally, we have to contend with the fact that people earnestly believe in the things they say and do. If it were just for optics and they didn't actually hold their positions, these issues would be far easier to deal with. The po…

As you have just described, accusations of virtue signalling are really accusations of people acting in bad faith by another name - and doing that without evidence of bad faith is corrosive and fallacious. Hacker News even has rules against it because it is not accepted as a valid form of argument. Just because the accusations aren't being levied against someone you're directly replying to here doesn't make it any better.

If you have reason to believe these people are bad faith actors, present the evidence directly rather than trying to sneak it in with weasel words.

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

#398

Post by brewdad »

roguecoder wrote: post #303
phil21 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Killing truly progressive programs for the purpose of virtue signaling is a loss for society It's not just a loss for society. It's society-killing. Taking resources away from those who move society forward and spending them on those who are unlikely to "pay it back" is a way your culture dies. Conquerers in the past used this strategy to win massive empires for themselves. It's a ridiculous self-own. This is perha…

I have been deeply amused that some recent studies found the signal that best correlated with innovation in a society wasn't upward mobility, but rather _downward_ mobility. The less rich people are allowed to buy success for their mediocre offspring, the better off society is.

Is that why Elon Musk's mom went on TV to explain just how much of a genius he is? It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

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

#399

Post by mlyle »

gyomu wrote: post #367
mlyle wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please provide some evidence that this kind of scripted and recitation-heavy instruction is beneficial compared to other approaches? I've only seen pretty limited, pretty confounded evidence for it. A lot of studies I've seen are studies of students in charter programs, but these studies tend to ignore pretty big selection effects (e.g. comparing students to the general student population, when studies have f…

> Can you please provide some evidence that this kind of scripted and recitation-heavy instruction is beneficial compared to other approaches? Singapore/Hong Kong/Japan/Taiwan/Macau dominating the PISA

Singapore's math program in elementary is actually much less recitation and rote based than we are used to in Western mathematics education.

Indeed, it's very much pictorial and intuition-building in ways that fans of DI tend to look down on. It's concept and problem solving before rote.

I don't know so much about these countries in primary education, but I do have a few Japanese textbooks from secondary school translated into English and published by the AMS. This material also seems less rote-heavy than I am used to.

E.g. I'm looking at an on-level grade 7 mathematics textbook, and it's spending a lot of pages justifying the idea of negative numbers in addition and subtraction and with pictorial representation and has comparably few problems to do.

In a US math textbook, this material would have been done before grade 7, but in less depth. There would be a whole lot of rules, algorithms, and rote practice.

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

#400

Post by danans »

scarmig wrote: post #82
danans wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's doubling as a proxy measure for the socioeconomic disadvantage the students have experienced up to that point. A socioeconomic disadvantage which in the case of California - and almost certainly elsewhere - is caused in significant part by historical racist policies (i.e. redlining).

Getting rid of a test that measures effects from redlining does nothing to eliminate the effects of redlining.

Agreed, but interpreting the results of tests without considering the effect that policies like redlining have on such results furthers the lie that the the variation in test results between groups represents innate differences in abilities of those groups instead of the effects of systemic and multigenerational discrimination.
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