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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

#431

Post by decremental »

qwerpy wrote: post #139
bobfromsf wrote: post #90

As a father with a son with IQ over 160, I can tell you unequivocally that California thinks gifted kids are the enemy. Gifted children, especially profoundly gifted kids like mine are special needs. He can’t function in a regular class because he would become bored and would act out and constantly get in trouble. Since my kid was a toddler we have had to completely rely on ourselves to figure everything out and we w…

I’m happy that you were able to work around the state’s horrible treatment of your gifted child, by throwing money at the problem. I’ll probably have to do the same with my children in my Seattle suburb. The real victims are the kids whose parents can’t afford to do this. It tends to be disproportionately the kids in the very demographics that the left professes to care about. So it’s weird to me that they would choo…

[dead]

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

#432

Post by Jensson »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #389
eitally wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, that was the aughts. These days the only anxiety is about cost of living, but it doesn't hit until college age. Speaking completely truthfully, my perception is that the teens of today are better adjusted psychologically than any generation before them.

Huh, why is that?

Everyone who grows up today has to get used to getting attacked online, it happens to everyone until they find their own filter bubble.

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

#433

Post by deanCommie »

bunderbunder wrote: post #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. Gifte…

Ditto. I skipped most of high school through an accelerated program and wound up in university before I was 15.

At the time I was happy. It was the first time I was surrounded by peers as smart or smarter than me. First time I wasn't bored in school.

It absolutely destroyed my social abilities and I spent the next 5 years miserable and depressed. I barely graduated and took another few years before I felt like I had caught up enough on everything I missed out on and I was able to start a career in my mid-20's at a comparable time to everyone else.

I'm no longer "exceptional" relative to my age peers, and Im just fine with that.

I have a son now and I genuinely don't know what I would do if he has the same challenges and opportunities as me.

On the one hand I would never wish what I went through on anyone. On the other, noone forced me to go. I wanted to.

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

#434

Post by TexanFeller »

chowchowchow wrote: post #375
sangnoir wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question was specifically about the outliers: has any research been done if outlying achievements go hand in hand with outlier IQs? Without any research or evidence, it's an area prone to a Just World fallacy where extraordinary achievements "ought" to be achieved by extraordinary talent. Rephrasing my doubts in perhaps an oversimplified manner: given the correlation you mentioned: is it reasonable to expect the t…

No, not to a person. There can be some stupendously dumb billionaires, especially since inheritance is a thing. I would however expect the average intelligence however-measured of the 100 richest "self-made" (lets just say who didn't themself inherit a generational amount of wealth) individuals in the US to be higher than a 100-person random sample of the population.

Equating achievement to financial success is a big mistake, but a bigly American one. The great scientists, while often somewhat privileged, were rarely in the billionaire class or their time’s equivalent. The average brilliant scientist or mathematician nowadays is making a wage that doesn’t afford them any luxuries whatsoever.

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

#435

Post by mlyle »

zozbot234 wrote: post #416
mlyle wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effectiv…

> Structured recitation in a classroom is basically the opposite of [tutorial instruction plus mastery methods]. Reference for this statement? From a rather abstract POV, it seems to be the closest thing to "mastery methods and tutorial instruction" that can actually scale to a large class size and engage all students by default. Also, what method can be most effective in a "nationally recognized" engineering program…

> Also, what method can be most effective in a "nationally recognized" engineering program (most likely with highly recognized students to match)

Part of what got my attention and asking you for citations:

> > > As an important point, the merit of this kind of education is by no means exclusive to disadvantaged students!

For more anecdata: I coach a MS competitive math team as an elective. Anyone can join. It's not selective. Our school is roughly 3% of the middle school students in our chapter, but we routinely take >50% of the top 12 spots. We don't do rote but just explore ideas and compare approaches. Also, students in the program on average pick up about .7 years of math skills beyond what similar control students at our school do during that time.

I came into this job thinking I was going to be all teaching and demonstrating methods, and doing a bunch of drill-and-kill, etc. In practice that's where I've been least effective personally and where the classroom has been a sad place to be.

During COVID, I was a substitute teacher in an 8th grade science classroom and I was teaching physics. We recited definitions and drilled and killed. The students did well in the material, but developed no great love for me or physics, and didn't do better in their next year of science classes than students who had been taught in a more informal, exploratory way. The students that I taught physics still actively avoid my programs.

> Reference for this statement?

In tutorial instruction, students study materials beforehand and come ready to debate, critique, and defend ideas in "class." It's about engaging with concepts actively.

On the flip side, Direct Instruction is more structured and teacher-led, focusing on clear, step-by-step teaching with a ton of overlap between sessions and very clear structured measurement of basic tasks.

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

#436

Post by didibus »

hintymad wrote: post #415
didibus wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And adding a bit more info, because I hate seeing people get misled about what equity is arguing for. The key difference of equity with equal opportunity is that equal opportunity provides the same resources/treatment to everyone, while equity recognizes that people start from different positions and may need different levels or types of support to reach the same opportunities. Equity is about ensuring everyone has a…

Yeah, I'm totally for this. I can see a push-back from some people, though: a talented kid may have access to more scarce resources, say a professor in a prestigious university, or a highly-selective camp like SAMS. For that those people will cry unfair.

Ya, there's push back from some people on either side.

I think one side doesn't want to "pay" to help others. Sometimes the idea of like everyone getting 500$ a month in social security is more alluring than giving it only to those who need it. So some people do prefer equality over equity. Similarly, in education, they don't see why they should "pay" for students that are not "smart", or for the fault of their parents, etc. Or they think, well if they get an extra hour of math tutoring, everyone should, or no one should. Which is the idea of equality, and not equity.

While the other side can get jealous of those that got lucky and started with money or privilege. So when the kid with money goes to a prestigious university, even though they also had to show they were smart enough for it, people start calling it unfair. Or if one person managed to bust their ass and make it from nothing, they pretend like probably they had more luck or privilege.

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

#437

Post by didibus »

casey2 wrote: post #427
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…

You can just as easily measure the second derivative, i.e. see how fast they are improving at improving.

Couldn't that also be on a different curve though?

Like they might have accelerated improvement right now, but will reverse in their late teens for example, thus still ending up in the same place in the end?

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

#438

Post by bobfromsf »

tims33 wrote: post #261
euroderf wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have had to go to private school because California does not skip grades even though it’s obvious the child doesn’t belong in the grade level for his age. Be careful what you wish for. Skipping 2nd grade led to bullying hell until I stayed for a second year of 6th. I think what you want for your kid is to skip N grades ahead in select subjects but otherwise stay in age peer group.

Agree. Social and emotional development is a real thing. I think most students (especially boys) are better off being more challenged in their age-appropriate grade-level than skipping.

This is not true based on research done on kids who were accelerated as far as they needed to.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.4219/jeg-2006-247

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

#439

Post by Seattle3503 »

hintymad wrote: post #317
jltsiren wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The solution is to make gift classes fluid. That is, the worst performing kids leave the program every year, while the best kids outside the program move in. Parents can only push so much, but they can't change talent distribution. What about the kids who thrive when their parents push hard enough? Well, in that case the kids are indeed talented, no? If the US people are inspired by seeing the street of LA at 4:00am…

Stack ranking kids sounds terrible.

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

#440

Post by savingsPossible »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #305
hintymad wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where the contradiction is. The key to me is "which places a high academic standard and holds teachers accountable", which I equate to "rigorous training". I guess the difference is on how we define "talented". To me most kids are just educable, which means they don't constantly push themselves, they don't take initiatives to dig deeper, nor do they proactively find resources to do more. Or they struggle…

> I guess the difference is on how we define "talented" Yes, and how we define "bad genes". I'm someone that you definitely wouldn't consider "talented" (since I've never worked at Google etc) and probably have "bad genes", what should be done with people like me?

* Train you to the best of your ability

* giving you a no-shame route up and down so that you can choose your own level of challenge, which entails

* giving you opportunities to try the more gifted programs to see if you'd do well and enjoy them

and also

* giving you the opportunity to choose a less demanding program in which you can find and adequate level of challenge (if you need to)

BUT

* treating disruptive behaviour as a choice to go to a less demanding program

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