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In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

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Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#5
At the end of the day I'd like to see the data.

Somewhat related: There was a recent episode in This American Life that showed how struggling minority students actually became above average or near the top in subjects like calculus when forced to sit in classes for "advanced" students as opposed to "remedial" classes.

A number of universities (including some well known ones) have tried this - some for many years - so the data is out there. At least those universities showed that pushing struggling students even more than what you have in a typical course led to better outcomes than the remedial courses.

Different scenario than this submission, but it highlights the need to throw intuition away and focus on whether there is any data to support this.

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#7
Broadly speaking, this entails making math as easy and un-math-like as possible. Math is really about language and culture and social justice, and no one is naturally better at it than anyone else, according to the framework.

Framework also seems to be expanding what "math" means.

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#8

this is pretty stupid but at the same time impossible to enforce. anyone can get a gifted-level math education by using the internet

in-person contact to peers with similar interests is quite valuable though. And finding that outside schools is even more reliant on parents organizing it etc.

Re: In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Gifted at Math

#10
post #5

At the end of the day I'd like to see the data. Somewhat related: There was a recent episode in This American Life that showed how struggling minority students actually became above average or near the top in subjects like calculus when forced to sit in classes for "advanced" students as opposed to "remedial" classes. A number of universities (including some well known ones) have tried this - some for many years - so…

My experience with this indicates it’s a paper improvement only:

It drops the quality of the class for the advanced students (who begin showing boredom disorders) and the improvement in struggling students is due to peer mentoring and not course content.

I don’t believe studies like these which don’t control for course quality or peer mentoring.

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