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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

#451

Post by driverdan »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #196
Animats wrote: post #191

> But others said the admissions exam and additional application requirements are inherently unfair to students of color who face socioeconomic disadvantages. Elaine Waldman, whose daughter is enrolled in Reed’s IHP, said the test is “elitist and exclusionary,” and hoped dropping it would improve the diversity of the program. Recognizing gifted students is inherently discriminatory. Because these are the numbers: Ave…

You are not supposed to talk about this.

Says who? Race is an arbitrary social concept and IQ tests have biases that explain the differences.

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

#452

Post by roenxi »

sangnoir wrote: post #211
polski-g wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally yes. Bill Gates will eliminate polio for mankind within his lifetime. He has at least 140IQ.

There are so many confounding factors are at play that you're ignoring and attributing the achievement to high IQ (and that only). The Guinea Worm is on the verge if eradication, mostly on the back of the multi-decade efforts of Jimmy Carter. I don't what his IQ is, but I'll assume it's below 140 and above whatever is the ballpark minimum required to enroll as a Navy Nuke. I posit that you don't need to be a genius t…

You're speculating that a US president has a relatively average intelligence - why are you assuming that? The top job in a democracy is generally one of the most competitive positions in the world and US presidents are typically exceptional in multiple different ways. It'd be really surprising to have a US president with an IQ below something like 120 and I'd personally be assuming >140 for the average. As far as I can see a 140 IQ is around the 0.1-1% mark, it isn't that rare compared to presidents (<0.01%).

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

#453

Post by jaybrendansmith »

phil21 wrote: post #32
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…

> 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…

There is always a massive shortage of gifted students, original thinkers, and neuro-divergents. We need 10x as much, and we need to take care of each one. This society is starving for fresh ideas. We do not lack for effort anymore, we lack for creative and pragmatic thinkers. Without them we will continue to turn on each other, because without them, it truly is a zero sum game.

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

#454

Post by jmyeet »

echoangle wrote: post #404
jmyeet wrote: post #37

With most problems in society there is a huge stumbling block that people aren't actually interested in resolving because it conflicts with their other interests. For example: homelessness. The number one cause of and solution to homelessness is... housing. Housing is too expensive. Housing needs to be cheaper. But too many people have a vested financial interest in maintaining and growing high prices. Interestingly,…

> For example: homelessness. The number one cause of and solution to homelessness is... housing. Is that true? Without having a deep insight into the subject, homelessness seems to often be a symptom of mental illness and substance abuse. I don’t think having cheaper housing would really fix the issue of homelessness.

Here's the best description I've heard of homelessness. It goes in stages:

1. You are evicted or priced out of your apartment or house. You are still working but you are now housing insecure. You might couchsurf, stay temporarily with friends or relatives or otherwise hop around until those options run out;

2. You are now living in your car. You likely still maintain a job. There's a constant cat-and-mouse with local authorities who will seek to tow your car or detain you if they find you living in your car. You might move around, sleep in Walmart parking lots and so on. At some point your car might break down and you can't afford to fix it, or it gets impounded and you can't recover it;

3. You are now living on the street. This is the first stage of homelessness that people generally see. Unfortunately visible homeless on the streets is largely viewed as an eyesore and people push local authorities to sweep them into a neighbouring town, city or county. Also, visible homeless is what drives people's perceptions of crime [1]. The same is true for the "migrant crisis" and visible (unhoused) migrants in places like NYC. Having no transportation, you will often lose your job (if you haven't already); finally leading to

4. You are longterm homeless. Because of this you likely have addiction and/or mental health issues as you self-medicate to cope.

Some (wrongly) believe that drug addiction leads to hojmeless. It's the opposite.

As for the cost of housing and homelessness rates, the link is well-established [2].

[1]: https://www.columnblog.com/p/people-feel-unsafe-because-visi...

[2]: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...

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

#455

Post by zozbot234 »

mlyle wrote: post #449
zozbot234 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In tutorial instruction, students study materials beforehand and come ready to debate, critique, and defend ideas in "class." This seems to be what's often called the "flipped classroom" approach. You're right that this is not directly "teacher led" in a material sense, but only inasmuch as the equivalent effort happens outside the classroom. The "debate, critique, and defend" approach shares both the "immediately…

> This seems to be what's often called the "flipped classroom" approach. A flipped classroom falls short of tutorial instruction. Often, it's just recorded lessons presented outside school time to leave more time for using the classroom in other ways. Homework in conventional primary classrooms is not helpful and may be harmful, and as best as I can tell, this includes flipped lessons and textbook readings. We've got…

Somewhat offtopic, but I'm surprised that "device misuse" is that big of an issue. I suppose that these are most likely school-provided and school-administered devices, so they should arguably allow for some sort of time-based kiosk mode where the student is restricted in what they can do on the device. Aside from that, I do in fact agree wrt. on the potential of Khan Academy and similar systems - they seem to have the potential get closest to the "Bloom's two sigma" result of fully individualized instruction.

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

#456

Post by liontwist »

bobfromsf wrote: post #443
liontwist wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I often hear the opposite, kids I knew who got a bachelors degree at 17 say well now what? What is the rush!

This isn’t about it being a rush. For kids like mine, they NEED it. My son wanted to learn calculus when he was 9 but I refused and instead sent him to outdoor summer camps, sports camps etc. He still doesn’t know calculus because I told him not to rush it and he is resentful but instead he took geometry, number theory etc. He wants to learn at an accelerated pace, it’s not about anyone except for him pushing himself…

Yes he needs intellectual stimulation.

But is that going to come from being in 6th grade instead of 3rd grade?

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

#457

Post by ndriscoll »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #296
ndriscoll wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thread is discussing the people in G&T programs as the people that "move society forward" and the rest as people that hold society back. While OP seems to think that there's an expansive group that "move society forward", I'm skeptical that this is actually what they mean, because the people that are used as positive examples for these conversations are exclusively poor Asian kids that get into top schools, not o…

There are literally multiple people in this thread (including myself and the above poster) saying they are talking about (relatively) normal people like themselves. We are outliers (someone taking AP calc BC in high school might be in the 95+ percentile in math aptitude), but not profoundly extreme outliers, and the 95th percentile is still millions of people. You seem to be the only person saying that it's a small group of elite kids under discussion.

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

#458

Post by pempem »

iwontberude wrote: post #306
pempem wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bold stance given your username. Institutional learning has been around globally in a wide variety of forms. What is so heavily romanticized in your opinion

The romantic notion that geniuses need an institution to coddle them and that by the grace of some government or non-profit organization then are humans capable of higher order thinking. The institutions are the tools for getting larger investments to allow for smart people to do their great work, not to create the people through education. Education systems today are fundamentally broken and reinforce feedback loops…

I think you'll find human beings learn best in conversation with others. Sometimes thats through books, and articles but for many its at least partially through conversation. Letters, podcasts, salons, coffee haus, banya trees and rostras. Its been shown again and again and again that humans need other humans to learn and that our learning is like the shellacking of a shell. It is inevitably informed by the layer before.

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

#459

Post by mlyle »

zozbot234 wrote: post #455
mlyle wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems to be what's often called the "flipped classroom" approach. A flipped classroom falls short of tutorial instruction. Often, it's just recorded lessons presented outside school time to leave more time for using the classroom in other ways. Homework in conventional primary classrooms is not helpful and may be harmful, and as best as I can tell, this includes flipped lessons and textbook readings. We've got…

Somewhat offtopic, but I'm surprised that "device misuse" is that big of an issue. I suppose that these are most likely school-provided and school-administered devices, so they should arguably allow for some sort of time-based kiosk mode where the student is restricted in what they can do on the device. Aside from that, I do in fact agree wrt. on the potential of Khan Academy and similar systems - they seem to have t…

> I suppose that these are most likely school-provided and school-administered devices, so they should arguably allow for some sort of time-based kiosk mode where the student is restricted in what they can do on the device.

In our case, schools purchase and bring their own devices past elementary school. But even with technical measures, there are a nearly infinite number of ways to screw around.

> they seem to have the potential get closest to the "Bloom's two sigma" result of fully individualized instruction.

They don't, though. In my experience, there's 3 reasons why a student will devote effort to improvement in a classroom. In order of their efficacy and difficulty to instill:

1. Pressure from grades/the gradebook. In my experience, this is only weakly effective. Even in my environment where families are really achievement focused. There is too much of a delay; even if things are updated in Khan or the gradebook nigh-immediately, the measure doesn't become consequential for a long time.

2. Social pressures in the classroom: desire to not look foolish; relationship with an adviser; desire to please the teacher; effects of appropriate praise; desire to do fun things that other students are doing.

3. True interest and independent engagement in the subject.

You could alternatively view this also as a scale of how quick and effective feedback is. By #3, the student starts to measure themselves.

Khan or DI will have a hard time taking a student to #3. Khan's a super-strong, super immediate version of #1; DI is a very weak version of #2 (but possibly the easiest to implement).

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

#460

Post by [deleted] »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #243
K0balt wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is good for a society and what feels just are often disparate things. But it is not unjust on a human scale that some people are born with lower potential than others. It’s just an unfortunate fact of life. What is just then? To whom is it just to invest 2x the resources into a person that will never likely tinder a significant benefit to society? To whom is it just to -not- invest in people who are particularly…

> invest 2x the resources into a person that will never likely tinder a significant benefit to society? So you would rather have the cleaning lady, the garbage collector, the truck driver,... not got proper read/write/calculate/economics... education and increase their chances of ending on the side where they fall for addiction instead?

[deleted]
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