The war on gifted education

https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/the-war-on-gifted-education

by paulpauper • 4 years ago

264 294 4 years ago

fasterplease.substack.com

westcort• 4 years ago

This: acceleration, not enrichment, is the most promising way to serve gifted students

Excessive acceleration can be an issue for students. Being in a class with only people much older than you can be very challenging. Accelerating 1 or 2 years ahead (over the entirety of schooling) of the rest of the students is probably better than what enrichment can do. However, accelerating 5 years is probably worse than accelerating 2 years and doing a lot of enrichment.

Additionally, I think that jumping past a grade and succeeding in the higher one is rather difficult unless you are very gifted. Enrichment can make the eventual acceleration easier.

Disclaimer: I am not an education professional though; just someone who once was a gifted student.

gkop3• 4 years ago

Polemics gonna polemic. Yes, we should invest in gifted students. But, ignoring the larger context of how public education is funded in the United States and the consequential giant gaps between school districts, where many poor ones don't even competently provide fundamental baseline services to their students, is not going to elevate the discourse.

mistrial96• 4 years ago

the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly. I have seen piles of new computers in a locked room with my own eyes, assisting a well-meaning engineer who placed the equipment. Meanwhile, I heard two middle-aged men talking on the bus alone at night, one was the driver. They both gave up as public school teachers due to lack of effort and interest by the students, year after year. The level of complacent sloth within administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time to time.

gkop3• 4 years ago

You know what else ain't gonna elevate the discourse? Use of phrases like "ultra-ghetto".

thelock85• 4 years ago

the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly

Any statistics or citations to back this up? In my experience, one cannot characterize thousands of schools this way because they have different governance and spending formulas across states, county lines, city limits, and even multiple districts within cities (which is especially true in urban cities).

brimble7• 4 years ago

The very worst schools in my city pay significantly better than the ones out in the "good" districts. They can do that because they get a ton of extra funding from the state and (I think) feds. I think the only schools that pay better than them are a small minority of the private schools.

It doesn't help much, because working conditions are so bad that anyone with options still doesn't want to work there. More funerals for kids. More 2nd-graders threatening teachers. More lockdowns over gun threats and such. More drug problems. More chronically-absent kids. More turnover among students. More horror-stories about home life. Most teachers who can afford to turn it down decide that their sanity & safety is worth more than an extra $8-12k/yr. Idealists who go in hoping to make a difference get their attitude adjusted fast. It's brutal, and money—at least, money spent on education per se—does not seem to be the solution.

The level of complacent sloth within administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time to time.

Heh, yeah, and that's in most districts, not just the poor ones :-(

Kharvok7• 4 years ago

It's because there is almost nothing that can be done. IQ is largely genetic, with a few social levers that can be pulled. We shouldn't expect from people what they are not capable of doing.

This applies to everyone.

SpaceManNabs6• 4 years ago

ultra-ghetto urban public schools

It is always disappointing, to come from one of these districts and then having obtained social mobility through talent and luck, to see what my new peers (since I assume most of us here have gone to a top tier school and work somewhere in tech/finance) think of my neighborhood. No care for how these situations happened.

TrispusAttucks• 4 years ago

Regressing the mean and shrinking the margins between high performers and low performers doesn't elevate the performance of the bottom. It just lowers the performance of the entire system. You could even argue it disenfranchises the lower but forcing more top tier talent into their employment tiers.

zaroth2• 4 years ago

I think you said it better than me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546204

gkop3• 4 years ago

Yes! 100%. The argument in the article isn't wrong, but the way it's made is highly unlikely to win people over to the cause (and could actually deepen the disagreement).

giantg211• 4 years ago

In most places, the majority of the funding is at the state and federal level. And that generally uses policies that give a larger share of funds to underserved schools.

antiterra3• 4 years ago

As someone who was put in a reading class five grades above my actual grade, I disagree with the idea that acceleration should be the primary benefit of gifted education.

What I needed was not just higher level reading, but content catered to someone 5 years younger than the usual age group for that reading. I needed help writing fast enough to keep up.

Because grade school curriculum came easily and I could ‘figure out’ everything, I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work. What I needed was to learn how to put forth effort to do things that were hard or required work for desired output. I needed help socializing because I didn’t relate to people my age and was too inexperienced to engage people who were on my intellectual level as peers.

I needed help creating because the standards for myself were so high. Not exceeding those standards always felt like failure

hellisothers• 4 years ago

This is where my 8yo is at now and it’s infuriating. He is in class all day at 2nd grade level and is given homework at 4th+ grade level but that means we our effectively his actual teachers. This also results in, as you say, everything is trivially easy or all of a sudden hard which has in general given him a complex around mildly difficult things and practice in general.

brimble7• 4 years ago

For kids who are behind, they solve this by throwing a lot more personnel at the problem, to the point that some kids have one-on-one assistants/tutors follow them around all day. Good luck getting budgets increased enough to do the same for gifted kids, though.

bcrosby95• 4 years ago

I guess it depends upon exactly what you mean. But based upon my 2nd grader, and from what I've heard from other 2nd grade parents, this is pretty normal for a 2nd grader, regardless of how gifted they are or aren't.

My 2nd grader can burn through material from the first half of the year. But current material... good luck getting her to do it. Difficult work makes people uncomfortable, and most young kids don't like being uncomfortable.

brightball• 4 years ago

My 7th grader is in 9th grade math and I feel this. The homework load is the killer and I end up being the teacher. I like the teaching part but it’s still exhausting.

fma• 4 years ago

This is why many parents enroll their kids to Kumon. Kumon gives kids the about of work for their right level - whether that's a 2nd grader is ahead and at a 4th grade level, or a 2nd grader who is behind and starts at a 1st grade level. At the same time just because a kid is at the 4th grade level in math...maybe their reading is in 2nd grade.

With traditional schools all the kids are throw together. This results in kids who lag behind to further lag behind because they can't keep up with the class and lose confidence in themselves. A kid who is ahead gets bored and lose interest in school and never gets challenged to maintain that independence.

citilife• 4 years ago

I'd argue this is why many kids are successful when home schooled.

The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is kind of strange to be honest. Is it really healthy for kids to interact regularly with their peers? I'd argue it's much better for children to interact with adults. Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for.

giantg211• 4 years ago

Well, those farm kids were 1 of 8 or so. So they socialized with each other.

watwut• 4 years ago

Afaik, home school kids are not massively more succesfull. Some are, but others have troubles.

And historically, kids were cared for in quite large variety of setting. And quite a lot of those were not romantic at all.

alfalfasprout• 4 years ago

If you want them to socialize, then yeah they should be with their peers.

stjohnswarts3• 4 years ago

Can't agree. Unless parents make a specific effort to get them out with other similar aged group of kids (maybe other home schoolers) then the kid is going to most likely have stunted social and emotional intelligence even if their academic intelligence is off the chart. Even as a kid who spent most breaks reading something several grade levels higher than my current one, I still liked to wander off and hang with the other kids in public school. I still enjoyed comic books, flag football at recess, and cartoons.

slothtrop4• 4 years ago

Historically, kids played with other kids and families didn't generally live far from others. On farms, families are larger so it's a moot point.

Infrequent contact with other kids can open the door to social anxiety and awkwardness as they grow. Not to mention, it's cruel. Kids are social beings too and they don't get their rocks off listening to adults talk down to them.

qiskit• 4 years ago

Ideally, the basics ( reading, writing, arithmetic, etc ) should all be done at home with their stay at home moms ( or dads ). Once they reach a certain level, then schooling should start ( maybe 7th grade or high school even ). Not only would that be better for the kids, it would be better for family bonding and community building.

But the modern education system was created for the exact opposite. To limit family bonding in favor of allegiance to the state and teach them enough to be drones for the factory/work force/military. Children are resources to be processed by the state via their factory-like schools into products to be consumed by corporations, government, etc.

celim307• 4 years ago

As someone who interacted mainly with adults growing up, I’d disagree. Being an adult isn’t a great filter of good character. As a kid I was exposed to some backwords ideologies and toxic attitudes from adults, exasterbated by the fact that since they were adults they came with a position of authority. This also made it difficult to make friends and socialize with peers when I got into my teens, I felt like I missed out on a lot by not smoothly integrating into teen culture.

Having a handful of solid adult role models is key, but a lot of social skills are learned by trial and error, and it’s way more helpful when you’re learning those alongside others who are also figuring it out, that’s also how new ideas and new cultural zeitgeists are created, by challenging old concepts and not having the baggage of the old way of doing things.

Obviously there’s pitfalls with taking all your social cues from hormone riddled peers, but it’s a trial I think everyone needs to go through to prepare them on how to socialize with the world at large.

IggleSniggle3• 4 years ago

I've known a bunch of homeschooled folks, and I know this is definitely coming from a place of confirmation bias, but...all of them were especially bad at code-switching. I think there's plenty of ways one could have wider socialization as a kid among adults, but it's much easier to imagine it coming to fruition in play with peers. I don't think exact age-matching is really necessary, but being around people that are at a similar life-stage certainly can't hurt in establishing "peering" where it matters.

quartesixte2• 4 years ago

Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for.

They’d also have a fair amount of siblings and cousins, the children of hired help, and entire village’s worth of other children to interact with. And depending on the era, a fair amount of absenteeism when it comes to actual parenting. So having peers of your age was both common, historically encouraged (stories of childhood friends abound), and important in establishing your place inside your community.

That being said, they were exposed to more adults on a daily basis, and integrated more into the life of adults. Particularly, they were exposed to the daily lives of adults at work. Which I think is a large part of helping to influence a child’s growth.

Childhood as we know it now is also a modern concept — the switch from childhood to adult was more child > young adult who doesn’t really know what they’re doing, rather than our modern child > adolescent > young adult path. (Edit because I hit submit too early). Childhood as also being an experience of being sequestered from the outside world is also modern.

gowld• 4 years ago

Schools traditionally were mixed age, because there weren't enough people in the same area for single-age classrooms.

This is hugely missing nowadays.

MisterBastahrd• 4 years ago

In what way? Most homeschooled kids that I've met have been painfully unaware of how the world actually works. They're slightly better at trivia because their parents try to surround them with "fun" things that they also like, but they're way worse at understanding advanced concepts. They also tend to be poor at behavioral adaptation.

smrtinsert• 4 years ago

Yes it absolutely is. I'm done shaking my head at the number of people I've known who have grown up with ridiculous IQS or magnet backgrounds just to do 0 with their life and be generally miserable.

The average honors students have grown up the happiest by far. They got great jobs, cheated on exams, got drunk on weekends. Personally, I should have studied less I think and been a little more dishonest like them.

All this bullshit over education - what a waste.

Tiger parents excel at raising miserable soulless kids. It's no wonder they grow up angry, resentful, or just fail out and become the black sheep of the family.

Tired of reading articles like this and the corresponding threads.

HWR_14• 4 years ago

The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is kind of strange to be honest. Is it really healthy for kids to interact regularly with their peers?

Oh yes. Social skills are vitally important. You have to learn those by doing.

Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for.

I don't think that's even true. I think historically kids were told to go away/be quiet until they were old enough to be productive.

I also think that we're producing better socialized kids these days.

chakkepolja• 4 years ago

In old times, kids would be growing in villages. There will be other kids from the neighborhood and family. Now it's replaced by friend groups in schools. I don't see much difference. They might have interacted more with adults than now, though.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work.

The thing is that everyone hits that wall at some point. Some just hit it later than others. But I agree that acceleration should only ever occur in a context of learning for mastery - if complete mastery is not attained in the "easy" subjects, pushing through the 'wall' of the actually challenging ones is way too difficult.

antiterra3• 4 years ago

It’s better to hit a wall earlier, when teachers actually care how well you’re doing and the stakes are lower. Then, you can get guidance on how to start climbing that wall.

sheepybloke• 4 years ago

Personally, that's why I liked AP courses in high school. After my AP Chem class, most of my college courses were straight forward, because my AP Chem class established and pushed good study and work habits because you needed those to do well and my teacher designed our course to help build them. Maybe in this case acceleration should mean challenging and building up students without overwhelming them?

antiterra3• 4 years ago

I failed a semester of AP english because I didn’t do weekly homework. I never really had to bother with homework before as a pass/fail requirement.

I had to drop AP Calc for another class to get my required English credit that semester. It was astoundingly basic. “Circle the right word” worksheets with “Joe [is/are] an astronaut.” I would do the work and pass out at my desk. The other students would slide the paper out from under my arm and copy my answers.

WalterBright5• 4 years ago

I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work.

I hit that wall my freshman year at Caltech. What a disaster. All my strategies of effortless A's blew up in my face. I'd get comments like "I really should fail you, but I'm going to give you a break." At the end of first semester of sophomore year, I had to come to grips with solving this or leaving.

After that, each semester came easier and easier, as I learned how to learn.

I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail, as my execrable performance that year did not affect my final GPA. I also am indebted to several people who freely gave the gift of their time to help me out.

(I never would have succeeded with remote learning.)

pdonis• 4 years ago

I'm so glad freshman year was pass/fail

MIT had the same policy when I was there, and I felt the same way about it: I needed that year to at least get started developing the study habits I didn't have to develop in high school.

mwattsun3• 4 years ago

I hit that wall at U.C. Berkeley over the English requirement. I didn't know how to write an essay on "Odysseus" and "The Iliad" and say something intelligent about them. I was doing fine in math and physics. In retrospect, my high school English teachers focused on doing well on SAT's, not teaching me how to write.

Parents: Make sure you're kids can write before they get out of high school because it's a crucial skill

Mezzie3• 4 years ago

Ha, I hit it in graduate school when I got MS my last semester.

It would have been so much better to hit that wall as a kid.

jacinda• 4 years ago

I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work.

This was, to me, the greatest benefit of being put in a gifted program in 3rd grade. I was so used to everything being easy that I cried at home that I had homework taking longer than 10 minutes that I actually had to concentrate on. I asked my dad to go back to the regular program, and he said I should stick it out for at least another month. I did, and learned how to work through things that seemed challenging at first.

The experience of having to put forth effort early(ish) in my life set me up far better for dealing with life later, because I learned how to push past things that were uncomfortable instead of giving up (i.e. "grit" became a part of my psyche when it was still pretty flexible).

I probably could have learned this lesson in other ways, but the fact that it's one of my clearest childhood memories certainly speaks to the impact it had on my life. And I know plenty of friends whose first experience needing to put effort happened in college, and things seemed a lot harder for them emotionally.

dottedmag• 4 years ago

I hit a wall when stuff got genuinely difficult or required significant work.

I hit that when I was 35yo. Oh boy it was difficult: you've been breezing through the life, and suddenly hit a brick wall.

namibj• 4 years ago

Even worse when you know you were on easy mode in HS, and no one tells you about the first couple weeks at university being anti-scare easy mode, leading you to calibrate a work/life balance target too far towards life with all the expected issues from that.

Btw, any tips for how to learn how to put forth effort to do things that require work for desired output? If they're "just" hard, curiosity tends to do well, but effort other than trying to grasp new concepts is surprisingly hard to bring forth...

astkaasa• 4 years ago

Agree with your point. I also want to mention that knowing how to adjust yourself when you hit the wall is important. Because "gifted" people always has his/her limit and is doomed to be failed at some time, he/she may not know how to handle this failure. One may drive himself/herself to a dead corner, don't know this is a normal thing and don't know how to get out. Early failure should be considered as a good method.

bell-cot3• 4 years ago

A Modest Proposal: Replace some of the "Gifted" schools with "Mature" schools. The former implies higher-than-average per-pupil spending. For the Mature schools, spend substantially below average per pupil. Only admit students who rate well in some combination of maturity, self-motivation, good behavior, etc. Increase the student/teacher ratio, and expect the brighter ones (in a given subject) to spend part of their time tutoring the less-bright. Have student government play a non-token role in running the school.

In other words, set up a new sort of school - which tags its graduates as mature, responsible adults. Not top-percentile test-takers, nor elite pampered princelings. Then see which type of graduate is preferred by colleges and employers.

Kalium3• 4 years ago

I'm legitimately uncertain if this is a bad idea presented as satire or a sincere idea.

no-s• 4 years ago

heheh...“A Modest Proposal”. Kids, stay away from the free lunch, it’s made of people...

I think it might be in the genre of HaHaOnlySerious.

trackstar3• 4 years ago

Why would you feel it's a bad idea and or satire?

aidenn08• 4 years ago

At the age where my, and my friends' kids are in schools, I've discovered that a big advantage that private schools have is that they educate the kids "at will."

Many private schools make it very clear to the parents, as well as the kids, that there are plenty of other students that want the slot the child has, which gives them leverage to educate how they want.

Public schools, at least in California, are beholden to the loudest, worst-behaved parents. There was a serious disciplinary issue recently at a local school that resulted in a multi-day suspension, which pretty much everybody involved agreed probably wasn't going to change the behavior. After digging a bit and having some frank conversations, the administration wouldn't pursue any other form of consequence because of fear of being sued by the parents. If expulsion were a legitimate option it would have given the administration bargaining power, but for anything which defending an expulsion is not a slam-dunk win in court, the only 3 "safe" options for teachers and administrators are:

1. Loss of playtime during recess/lunch

2. Detention

3. Suspension

I don't know how big of an actual problem torts are, but I see a lot of bad policies (in education and elsewhere) enacted due to fear of torts.

mrguyorama• 4 years ago

If you think private schools actually punish the kids whose parents directly pay them, I have a bridge to sell you.

brimble7• 4 years ago

Public schools are also bound to serve special needs kids, which is incredibly expensive. Private schools don't have the same responsibility (even if they're under any similar legal obligation, they can and surely do try to minimize that through various means)

That's part (part!) of why per-pupil spending in public schools seems so high for the outcomes they produce, and part of why private schools have an advantage.

Kharvok7• 4 years ago

What would this select for? All you would be doing is establishing a poor proxy for general intelligence though you would likely select for general intelligence on the whole by grading "maturity".

Kalium3• 4 years ago

Also "good behavior" is a proxy for a healthy home life, which is to a great extent a measure of social and economic class.

trackstar3• 4 years ago

We used to have such a concept in my school system, it was called "tracking." Sadly, they did away with it midway through my sentence. We had AP / IB track courses, but also so many students that we had a second, more mature level in terms of both behavior and intellectual pursuit (at least for AP, I only took one IB course).

This track was cancelled (10+ years ago) in the modern progressive fashion, being derided as some blend of discrimination. The end-result was students who were into school being put into the same pot of students in the rest of the courses (non-AP, AP - your choice). Unfortunately for the tracked students, we were hit with a one-two punch of the end of tracking and the administration's pursuit of glory and State recognition. Our guidance counselors aggressively recommended or, in some cases, forcibly placed students in AP courses for which they had neither the interest nor the proclivity.

Personally, I was forced into a high-tier Spanish course my third (and final) year of high-school, despite having no aptitude and lower-end grades (80-85%) for the language despite three years of study. Resulted in my skipping all courses and writing my "Kiss My Ass" in another foreign language I pursued during my free time. I rode into the sunset with a grade of 30% or so, a job waiting for me in the city as an apprentice software engineer and a full-ride to university.

Frankly, schools in the US just don't seem to exist to put out good, well educated thinkers but like many government institutions (and I say this as a former government worker) - to continue their own existence, find glory for those at the top, and if good things happen for the citizens this is a nice side-effect and typically at the expense of the soldiers in the trench rather than good, altruistic stewardship.

sacrosancty3• 4 years ago

Are you really going to get maturity or just superficial signs of maturity from immature kids? I think kids that more boldly explore social interactions (ie. naughty) at a young age may end up more mature as adults. Someone who's polite and well-behaved may doing that because they're too emotionally immature to know how to do anything more risky and are just performing "professional behavior" which is a kind of lowest-common-denominator for getting along with others.

trackstar3• 4 years ago

In practice, I feel you're right. It will simply devolve into a superficial display of maturity being used as the right metric while real, deeper signals are buried or ignored in the face of superficial counter-signal.

Worked as something of a TA in several high school computer courses (MS Business Applications, Programming (Basic), Programming (Java)) with many students of varying levels and competencies. Was quite a fond memory in quite a lot of ways. Schools should encourage more of that sort of thing and less batshit test prep. Unfortunately, true well-rounded human beings don't solicit eyeballs and award shows and budget dollars.

diebeforei4852• 4 years ago

For the Mature schools, spend substantially below average per pupil

This is already the case for gifted schools, though the critics may not say it out loud. Stuyvesant High School has a lower budget per student than the average NYC high school, and Lowell High School has a lower budget per student than the average San Francisco high school.

x3n0ph3n3• 4 years ago

Did you mean this as an absurdist satire? If not, calling it a "Modest Proposal" is a misstep.

bell-cot3• 4 years ago

I meant to be ambiguous, and start an interesting and wider-ranging discussion. I was, at best, modestly successful

No one seemed interested in the "what might be done, within existing resources and sensitivities, for the more promising poor & unwanted children?" angle. Admittedly, few folks on HN are likely to recall Dr. Swift's subtitle, or care much about helping the poor & huddle masses, yearning...

VictorPath• 4 years ago

meritocracy...children compete to get into the best nursery school

If the round hole is the mythical meritocracy, the comical square peg is wealthy parents having their kids "compete" to get into a nursery school and declare the entrants got in by "merit". What a farce.

jmclnx• 4 years ago

Smart kids mean smart adults, thus a threat to people in power. That is why education in the US is failing people. I think this has been going of for over 40 years with public school funding being cut over and over. Now people with some means are getting to see what inner city schools have been like for well over 40 years.

This only helps people who can afford sending their kids to exclusive private schools. Thus in a way, increasing racism because most of the rich are in a specific race.

oh_sigh• 4 years ago

You're arguing that 60 year old politicians are intentionally keeping 10 year olds dumb so they don't replace them in the power structure 20+ years later?

jwiz• 4 years ago

I don't think OP means "politicians" when they said "people in power".

I think they meant people with (lots of) money.

zaroth2• 4 years ago

You’re only half right. Public school funding has not been cut over and over. We spend more and more to achieve less and less, while the curriculum is destroyed, and teaching methods degrade.

The goal has shifted to equality of outcomes, not equality in inputs / resources. The least capable are lavished with the greatest resources while the most capable are ignored and held back.

I think this is based on the fundamentally flawed assumption that every human is equally capable given the same opportunities and resources, and somehow the school district is the place to compensate for perceived “equity” gaps.

I’d expect the macro level effect is a dumbing down of society to the least common denominator. Or to put it another way, the bottom half of IQ adolescents may do marginally better in the next 30 years in terms of quantifiable contributions to society such as lifetime earnings or degrees obtained or patents filed, etc., whereas the top half of IQ adolescents will do dramatically worse.

qwerpy• 4 years ago

I’ll confirm part of this. I have some means, and am seeing signs of my school district reducing investment in accelerated/gifted programs in favor of more “inclusion”. When it comes time to choose a school for my kids, I may opt to send them to private schools. Not everyone has this option. I’d much rather public schools provide this for everyone, but if they choose not to I will simply pay to get it just for my kids.

DelaneyM• 4 years ago

Speaking as a former "gifted" kid, acceleration is a horrible idea.

I skipped a bunch of grades, got into MIT but went to a local college at 13 (who lets their 13-year-old live in a college dorm?), ended up working for a bit then going back to school with my peers.

If I could do it again I'd have taken _breadth_ instead of depth. Finished high school math? Good for me, now grab a third language. Bored in school? Off to a foreign country to learn by immersion. No courses left undone? Take six months and see if I can realize my dream of making the national team in my sport, etc.

Going deep is very risky. Eventually you end up at the end of the easy path of coursework and classes and are in the same place as everyone else (just a year or two earlier). Unless you're absolutely, positively sure that that specific area is where you want to spend the rest of your life, that head start wins nothing enduring.

emacsen2• 4 years ago

Just out of curiosity, did you live in the Philadelphia area?

I knew a 13 year old going to a local college in Bryn Mawr/Haverford, but I don't think he was attending either of those prestigious colleges.

I don't recall his name (this was nearly 30 years ago) and I wondered what happened to him.

Reading these comments it sounds like a lot of people feel like you do about acceleration being an issue.

For me, I was both Gifted and Learning Disabled, and both programs were unprepared for the issues of someone who was both very smart but also had significant learning issues.

It was very difficult. :(

IggleSniggle3• 4 years ago

I was also both Gifted and Learning Disabled (although I prefer to list them in the opposite order). I think it's likely that there's a lot more neurodiversity than acknowledged generally, but we're just sort of stuck with the very human condition of balancing the needs of the group with the needs of the individual.

Honestly I don't think any "program" is truly prepared to meet the needs of anybody at all. It was difficult for me, too, but I think striving, suffering, etc are all human conditions that we all experience regardless of how we get there. "Gifted" and "Learning Disabled" programs exist for the benefit of normalizing behavior and capabilities that are farther outside the curve. That they existed when we were young is merely a testament to a collective desire for general cohesiveness.

R0b0t1• 4 years ago

There are a handful of studies I am aware of. Acceleration of 1-2 years among gifted students is correlated with a lack of negative outcome, i.e., not accelerating them is correlated with depression, drug abuse, and mental health crises. But acceleration beyond that sees no marked improvement or detriment. Child prodigies tend to become very normal career scientists or engineers.

giantg211• 4 years ago

"went to a local college at 13 (who lets their 13-year-old live in a college dorm?),"

Sounds like the premise for an American Pie movie.

brimble7• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius

Though it looks like he's 15, not 13.

MereInterest• 4 years ago

You might enjoy the movie "Real Genius", where one of the main characters is a early high school graduate, accepted into "Pacific Tech", and struggling to adapt to the different social expectations. Amid the standard shenanigans, there are several conversations on how being smart isn't everything, and how there is a social responsibility to use your intelligence responsibly.

veganhouseDJ2• 4 years ago

It is really strange to me that we can't figure this out.

I almost think it is because our entire view of education is conflated with a type of sporting event. You were one of the grand champions of this sporting event even though obviously it would have just made sense to learn more. Instead it is this weird sporting event race and the concept of learning more just isn't part of objective of the game.

IggleSniggle3• 4 years ago

Leaning on the sporting event analogy, the goal is cohesiveness. You value your star players, but you also need to be a part of the team. We're not sure what the game is, but we're a social species.

ripper1138• 4 years ago

There’s also a lot more to life than studying. But the argument is that you and other kids on that path will maybe someday be exceptionally productive to society in some field.

I only skipped one grade and still felt isolated from other kids sometimes. I can’t imagine how you’d feel! As a parent I’d personally rather let my kid have a somewhat normal childhood than maximize their intellectual potential if that meant sending a 13yr old to college.

jessriedel3• 4 years ago

You've given an argument for more gifted education, not less.

The fundamental issue is that some kids learn faster than others, so that if you want gifted kids to be around other kids their own age while still being challenged, you need to draw from a large region and cluster them together in one place. The most gifted children will have to be the most clustered. If you needed to go to MIT to be challenged, that is because of a lack of gifted education.

Separately, I think we should be very skeptical of the idea that a good default path for kids is to spend most days surrounded by kids within 12 months of their age. This sort of schooling has only been widespread for roughly a century; for the vast majority of history kids grew up with a much broader range of ages around them. I agree that getting thrown into a college dorm at 13 might be very bad, but I find spending all day with other 13 year olds to also be very bad.

nouveaux2• 4 years ago

There are lots of stories of kids failing socially when they are not with kids with similar emotional intelligence. I know people who have skipped only two grades who are brilliant, but socially off.

It is likely to depend on the child and what they would do well in.

jedberg2• 4 years ago

I was in a very similar situation. At 11 I started attending to local state college during the summers. At the end of the second summer they offered us all the chance to attend full time. My parents opted to let me continue in regular high school, some of the other kids started full time at state school (I kept going during summers).

One of the kids who attended full time tried to transfer to CalTech after two years, and they rejected him, told him he wasn't well rounded enough. So he joined every club on campus and ran for President of every single one. Most did not let him because he was only 15, a few did. CalTech still rejected him. He ended up graduating from state school and going to grad school a few years later at an Ivy League school, having basically missed out on the entire undergrad experience.

I on the other hand got to do all the normal "high school" stuff while I was mostly bored in my high school classes, but then I got into Berkeley and went there with my peers. I feel like I had the better experience.

cortesoft• 4 years ago

We had a 15 year old who lived in the dorms with us when I was at undergrad. He had already finished his BS and was in grad school. Looking back, so many things we all did together were probably not great for a 15 year old.

brewdad3• 4 years ago

I can believe it. We let our kid skip 4th grade. It was absolutely the right thing for him at the time. He's now a college freshman and first term was a mess. Being under 18, he needed his parents to sign off on a bunch of things no other student had to even think about. Thankfully, he's turned 18 now.

He took a band trip to Vegas this week but got left behind last night because he was the only under 21 on this trip. Part of me is annoyed that no one was willing to skip the clubs and tables to not leave him hanging alone. But I remember back to that age and there's no way I would have done that at 21 with a per diem. He made the best of it and had a really good meal and explored the Strip but the age difference matters a lot in the college years.

ip26• 4 years ago

that head start wins nothing enduring

This has been a big change in thinking for me as well. You might be able to impress some folks with your graduation year, but otherwise you are just another graduate.

AtlasBarfed• 4 years ago

I see two issues with "gifted students" in modern education:

1) some school systems see them as critical to "raising up" other students around them, but I never see any analyses as to if this "holds down" the gifted student's development.

2) I've read that students learn a huge proportion of things from their peers. That implies that true gifted education involves comingling a sufficient population of gifted students of the same rough age range among each other.

3) gifted students really benefit from "gifted" teachers. They don't necessarily need deep PhDs in academic subjects, more they just need to be "broadly smart".

#1 sounds like it sucks for the gifted, especially with the substantial undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in American education and the specter of bullying. Maybe in a day of 7-8 classes you do gifted + nongifted intermixing for 1-2 classes at once.

#2 needs a sufficient population of gifted students

#3 is really hit or miss in schools

All three of those are why class conscious parents pay a lot of attention to the school district of a school, and are defensive of other students coming into "good" school districts. Also, per "The Bell Curve", smart people tend to be well-off, and so the specter of NIMBYism and housing exclusion rears its head over education.

Deep learning in traditional subjects is the default of gifted, but I agree that what is needed (as hinted at in breadth-smart teachers) is breadth-first learning. Because unfortunately gifted students have their passions decided for them: You're going to get good grades!

If my kid is gifted, and based on the inheritability of IQ, he probably will be, I'm not subjecting him to acceleration. It'll probably take some degree of home schooling instead.

The only acceleration I'd be in favor of is skipping Junior/Senior high school years and going part time to local colleges. Accelerate maybe 1-2 grades tops in specific things.

wheelinsupial• 4 years ago

I think there is some evidence for the benefits of acceleration that comes from an Australian study of gifted students that you may be interested in investigating. (By no means am I gifted, and it's entirely possible that I'm mischaracterizing or misunderstanding the results.) The book is Exceptionally Gifted Children", 2nd edition, by Miraca Gross. An excerpt can be found at [1].

There are some previous HN comments that discuss this including [2], which names Terrence Tao, UCLA math prof, as one of the participants in the study.

Two passages that I think highlight the extremes both in acceleration and outcome are:

“… 17 of the 60 young people were radically accelerated. None has regrets. Indeed, several say they would probably have preferred to accelerate still further or to have started earlier…. The majority entered college between ages 11 and 15. Several won scholarships to attend prestigious universi- ties in Australia or overseas. All have graduated with extremely high grades and, in most cases, university prizes for exemplary achieve- ment. All 17 are characterized by a passionate love of learning and almost all have gone on to obtain their Ph.D.s.”

“The remaining 33 young people were retained, for the duration of their schooling,… Two dropped out of high school and a number have dropped out of university. Several more have had ongoing difficul- ties at university,…”

[1] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11510032

jwkane• 4 years ago

Perhaps not a popular opinion, but the overwhelming majority of "gifted" kids seem to be near the middle of the bell curve with parents that are convinced little George is the next Einstein.

It is kind of fascinating since it does seem plausible that treating a child as gifted with high expectations and then providing focused, advanced instruction may be a self-fulfilling sort of situation.

bjornlouser• 4 years ago

or put another way, you can't fix the low expectations of families in the bottom half with policy

rr8083• 4 years ago

I used to think "gifted" implies there is some natural high intelligence, where in reality its the children of well educated and/or motivated parents. Honestly now I think both benefits from segregated education so I dont really care about the distinction.

chemeng• 4 years ago

I have thought that selection for "giftedness" in young children is multi-factored with a combination of "exposure" and innate aptitude and curiosity of the child at the very least.

If you take "exposure" to mean the child has been introduced to a multitude of concepts and experiences both at their age-appropriate levels and grades above, the conjectured distribution starts to make sense. Wealthy children or those of highly educated parents tend to have incredibly high "exposure" increasing their representation in gifted programs. Those not from such a background will necessarily need to be highly curious and/or have high innate aptitude.

For the lower grades, gifted kids regardless of background will be in the upper decile of scores. As they grow older and "exposure" differences across the entire population minimize, those who were gifted only due to "exposure" will fall to the middle of the curve. Those with high curiosity/aptitude will continue to be in the upper decile, with those who had early and continued high exposure (usually a result of wealth or parent motivation) in the top percentile.

To your point, if you believe the goal should be to meet children where they are and advance them, this model isn't horrible. What it does point out is that there may be a fair amount of top percentile talent that is unrealized due to lack of "exposure" and resources.

Kharvok7• 4 years ago

Establish cohorts in schools by academic ability. People want to be grouped with peers and they are more successful when doing so.

We shouldn't have children at vastly different ability levels in the same classroom. Struggling kids are made no better, and the exceptional are dragged down.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

The reason why this is a really bad idea from an efficiency and an equity POV is that it leads to royally screwed-up incentives for teachers. No self-respecting teacher really wants to teach a class of "struggling, low-achieving" students. So the lowest quality teachers end up teaching those classes, and the struggling students are basically trapped with no prospect for real improvement. It's awful.

It would be very different if teachers could meaningfully specialize towards providing effective instruction for these lower-achieving students. But we barely manage to do this for actual "special" ed, and then only at huge cost.

Kharvok7• 4 years ago

I agree with your concerns but we already do this somewhat informally with public education in much of the country with college prep, advanced, honors, and AP courses.

I'm just advocating we act with more purpose and honest intention about what we're already doing.

throwaway73838• 4 years ago

An alternative perspective is that the lower performing teachers will relate more to the lower performing students, and the higher performing teachers will relate more to the higher performing students.

And, from a pure efficiency standpoint, we should absolutely seek to give every possible opportunity to those gifted students. For the lower performing kids, focus on teaching values and ethics, along with realistic and practical goals, to make up for any issues in their upbringing. I think attitude is as important as aptitude for the middle and lower end spectrum kids.

diordiderot2• 4 years ago

8 classes ranked. 4 teachers

A: 1&8

B: 2&7

C: 3&6

D: 4&5

The ole Catan split

sacrosancty3• 4 years ago

What seems to happen from what I've seen is not quite that. Junior teachers work in low-performing schools and classes, while experienced teachers are are the better ones. But, and this is a big bug, unlike many professions, seniority doesn't reliably correspond to performance and may in fact be negatively correlated! Young teachers are often more enthusiastic and capable of engaging easily-distracted kids while experienced teachers have a clearer understanding of the syllabus and content so it actually seems like a good fit for everyone.

adamsmith1434• 4 years ago

No self-respecting teacher really wants to teach a class of "struggling, low-achieving" students.

That doesn't ring true to me. Why wouldn't a good teacher take pride in taking kids below the curve up to Average? I would wager that this probably has a better net impact than pushing the elite kids that much further.

tester7562• 4 years ago

Struggling kids are made no better, and the exceptional are dragged down.

I disagree

I've been terrible student (think of passing subjects, but pretty close to the "edge") until last two years of HS

where I actually started putting effort into math/english and then I looked at the best students after working with them for a while and I was like "why can't you do better, just like them? are you worse or something?"

that was huge motivation, just awarness that you could do better itself

it works in other things in life too - internet, programming, hackernews.

If I were in a group with people similar to me, then I don't know how it'd end, honestly and it pretty scares me to think where I'd be now in life

randomsilence• 4 years ago

With IQ tests identifying you as intelligent, you could be in a small class with other terrible students and a teacher who knows how to reach and motivate you. After some weeks you could rejoin the best students and learn at a much higher pace.

Where would you be if you had the best education?

toomanybeersies• 4 years ago

That's how my high school (in New Zealand) did things. We were separated into 3 bands, the first band for high achieving students, the second band for average students, and the third band for learning support. From memory, there were ~5 classes in the first band, 10 in the second, and 3 in the third.

It was a great system for both teachers and students. Everyone in a class would be learning at roughly the same rate, and the school was able to allocate resources, such teachers aides, more efficiently.

pacbard• 4 years ago

My impression of what makes the debate about gifted education and (to an extent) the new California math standards is the issue of the negative externalities in the decision to segregate high achieving students from the general population of students.

The linked articles cites some evidence that moving high achieving/gifted students have a positive effect on their math and ELA achievement. I don't believe that anyone is contesting that having a classroom for gifted students has a positive effect on their learning.

On the other hand, there is a growing concern of the negative externality of this decision on the other students in the larger school community. In other words, we know that having high performing peers have a positive effect on students learning (this is a positive externality of having a desk mate that is gifted). The theory goes that removing these gifted students from regular classrooms has a negative effect on everyone else that remains. Again, this is a process that makes intuitive sense.

The tough sell in this argument is that, at the end of the day, this remains an externality for gifted students. Helping your desk mate does not directly impact you and, in all honesty, might even hurt your chances for a perfect SAT score or of admission at a top university because you took a lower division courses than your peers that were scooped away to a gifted classroom. Parents/families need to make the decision to give up on the positive returns of gifted education in favor of potential learning outcomes for other students or even more remote, long term outcomes of (maybe) less crime or increased tax base 20 years after graduation. I am not sure if this is a viable demand to place on parents/families given how competitive society at large is.

vorpalhex• 4 years ago

Parents/families need to make the decision to give up on the positive returns of gifted education in favor of potential learning outcomes for other students

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

We know a big part of education success is home environment. You can surround a kid with Einstein schoolmates but if he's getting beat daily and not getting fed, it doesn't matter. Add in unsafe living conditions and no access to books and you have a disaster nobody but the kids parents can solve.

Why then should we harm the gifted? Why should we allow them worse outcomes because someone's parents are garbage? You aren't going to make a shitty parent into a capable one when they fundamentally don't care to begin with, no matter how many high performing students you drag down in the process.

On an individual basis my duty is to do the best I can do for my kids, and that is all I can do.

chasd003• 4 years ago

Parents/families need to make the decision to give up on the positive returns of gifted education in favor of potential learning outcomes for other students or even more remote, long term outcomes of (maybe) less crime or increased tax base 20 years after graduation. I am not sure if this is a viable demand to place on parents/families given how competitive society at large is.

It's a hard, if not impossible, sell to ask any parent to sacrifice their child on that altar no matter how competitive they are.

chernevik2• 4 years ago

No. The better students are not some resource to be used for the benefit of the other students. They are clients in their own right and should be developed to the best of their abilities.

Regarding children as some kind of state resource is just wrong.

rr8083• 4 years ago

My daughter goes to accelerated high school. Its great for her and her friends.

The main problem for society is that 50 years ago you didn't need to have great grades to get into great courses, or colleges. Now you have to be in the top 5-10% whatever. There are lots of people who are in the regular schools that could be doctors/engineers/lawyers but wont get in because its an arms race. If you have to be in the right elementary/middle/high school to be a doctor its too hard for regular people.

giantg211• 4 years ago

They don't have to go to "great" colleges that highly restrict admissions. You can be a lawyer, engineer, pre-med or nursing at state schools which are much easier to get into. Med school itself has some issues around things like residency programs, which are more a healthcare system and policy issue than a prerequisite education issue.

Edit: why downvote?

nemothekid• 4 years ago

Both Law and Medicine are famously exclusive to "great" colleges. Like you mentioned, it's already tough as it is it to complete residency even if you attended a good school, but Law has revolved around the T14 for a while now.

zozbot2345• 4 years ago

We have too few great colleges around for the potential population. Should really be building more colleges and expanding the existing ones. MOOC's and open educational content are an inefficient band-aid, in-person instruction should always be preferred.

recursive• 4 years ago

The colleges we have are too expensive. They tend to bundle up sports/research/culture/medicine/whatever/education. Students have to pay tuition to support all that. If you're strapped for cash, there's not really a way to opt out of all the bonus content and just get the education.

Gigachad3• 4 years ago

Aren't these schools seen as good _because_ they are exclusive?

adamsmith1434• 4 years ago

Artificial constraint of supply by elite colleges.

With Endowments well into the tens of $Billions there is no reason schools like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Etc. can't have freshman classes of 10,000 instead of 2,000.

aidenn08• 4 years ago

I see a lot of comments on the outcomes of gifted kids and others in their cohorts depending on whether or not the gifted kids are separated out. I'd like to add a dose of Realpolitik:

Already a disproportionate number of gifted kids are from wealthy families, and if gifted education goes away, those kids aren't going to be in the "regular" public classes, they are going to private school. The clear losers in that situation seems to be the remaining gifted kids from less wealthy backgrounds.

mistrial96• 4 years ago

this is exactly the theory that landed people like me in measurably the worst and most dangerous urban public schools in the USA

aidenn08• 4 years ago

Can you clarify what you mean?

rahimnathwani6• 4 years ago

'those kids aren't going to be in the "regular" public classes, they are going to private school'

Most private schools aren't set up to cater to gifted kids. If you don't believe me, ask the folks running a private school how they deal with kids who are 2-3 grade levels ahead in math.

Then ask them for concrete examplea of what they actually mean. And concrete examples of the outcomes this differentiated instruction has achieved for those kids.

Private schools often have smaller class sizes, nicer physical environment, better equipment and higher expectations. But the curriculum is still aimed at the average kid in that school, with little consideration for the outliers.

EDIT: I should have mentioned, that I interpret 'gifted' to mean something like top 3% by ability (corresponding to an IQ of about 130). Back when SFUSD used to identify kids at gifted and talented, they were talking about the top ~30%, which is totally different.

aidenn08• 4 years ago

Private schools often have smaller class sizes, nicer physical environment, better equipment and higher expectations

Which covers about 75% of what parents expect out of a gifted program.

MattGaiser3• 4 years ago

One thing to consider is that the average at academic private schools is probably better to begin with. So all the kids might be 1-2 years ahead of the average student overall.

hibikir• 4 years ago

Nobody claims that most private schools are set up to cater to gifted kids: What you get is a whole lot of different schools, catering to different backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses, some of which will cater mostly to gifted kids.

This is easy to see in metro areas with a balkanized public education system, like Saint Louis. Your typical child has access to one public school, which could be quite good, or horrible, depending on where it is: The better the school, the more expensive it is to get a house that can sends kids to it. If you don't want to move for your favorite school, you go into one of hundreds of private schools. The differences amongst them are so wide, locals ask others where they went to high school as a shortcut to get a lot of information about them. On the gifted end, you will find private schools where less than 15% of the class is stuck "only" at grade level in math, and that's probably because they are way ahead somewhere else. Those schools tend to be so interested in high performers that there's a great chance there's quite a bit of financial aid for those with blue collar parents.

So yes, most private schools are definitely not better: Hell, I'd argue that in a city like this, most private schools are worse academically. But when there are enough private schools, self-assortment surrounds kids with others that are more like them, whether it's athletic focus, qualifying as gifted, following Christian Science, or making sure most girls are rich enough to own horses. Whether this is good or bad for the city is a different story, but I suspect the gifted kids come out ahead.

And yes, all of this will only happen in large enough metros with enough children. A gifted child in a small town is probably served more or less equally badly by public and private schools.

WillPostForFood2• 4 years ago

Most private schools aren't set up to cater to gifted kids.

Just by filtering out the most disruptive kids, having small class sizes, and teachers aligned with the school, kids, and parents, you are catering to the gifted and the rest of the students as well.

6gvONxR4sf7o• 4 years ago

I was a kid who coasted through school and got by on smarts alone. I don't care how we push kids, we just need to not let them coast too long. If that means enrichment or acceleration or whatever else the comments are debating, it's pretty much all better than the status quo.

convolvatron• 4 years ago

I was too. all the AP classes. a grade ahead. and then I got to college and I had no idea how to actually study and learn real things

chasd003• 4 years ago

i went to a small HS out in the backwoods of North Texas ( graduating class had 20 people in it). I was told how smart i was over and over and started to believe it. Then went to college and found out exactly how much BS was fed to me the previous 4 years. I really suffered for it taking a long time to graduate and almost getting kicked out a couple times.

Now I have two kids and prioritize learning how to learn with them. If you can develop the skills in a child required to work hard, find the answers, find the understanding, and teach themself then you've put them in a good spot to have at least a fighting chance when faced with the unknown.

tastyfreeze• 4 years ago

Public school was the same for me. It wasn't until doing poorly in college that I realized that I actually needed to study to do well. Unfortunately, I had never developed study habits as I hardly had to crack a book to do well before. It was quite a struggle for me to teach myself how to learn when I couldn't just pick up the material from class.

To me that illustrates the general failure of public school is not teaching children how to learn.

stjohnswarts3• 4 years ago

I think kids need to be kids but there should be accelerated classes at least a portion of the day to satisfy them intellectually (math, science, literature). They are (most likely) still mentally the same age and enjoy most of the same playtime activities as other kids. It's not likely that an 8year old is gonna have a good time hanging with a clique of 12 year olds and vice versa.

thelettere3• 4 years ago

"The problem of educating the educators is a problem which the democrat forgets in his enthusiasm for educating the pupils."

When's the last time a single person on hn dared to look at the curriculum of the average degree in education? It consists of courses that any person with the slightest degree of intelligence would run from screaming. I'm interested in education but you couldn't pay me to attend one - it's 99% fluff and nonsense.

Because the bigger problem is not the existence or nonexistence of exclusive institutions but of the kind of people that would render such an education educational. Because neither the gifted nor the wise - particularly if male - go into education today.

Perhaps a reason for the poor track record of modern education in producing any geniuses on par with those of the past and the long-standing dry spell of great works. And the larger trend of exclusive education producing little but "really excellent sheep".

"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it."

In which case perhaps it's best it's done away with. It appears past fixing, the rot infiltrating to the core of the bureaucratic machinery.

Edit: fixed/clarified/extended ending.

diordiderot2• 4 years ago

Well the best and brightest going into finance are helping "discover value"

thelettere3• 4 years ago

Exactly. All that energy and time and money to "cultivate" gifted individuals only for them to crawl into that black pit. And the irony is that this education only helps them make that choice with self-awareness of how absurd and culturally destructive it is. But it is where the rewards are, and so that's where they go.

To quote Colacho again "Reeducating man will consist of teaching him once again to value objects correctly: that is, to need few." Then perhaps we might have some hope.

SamoyedFurFluff• 4 years ago

What do you define as a great work? What do you define as a genius on par with the past?

This reeks of cognitive bias.

thelettere3• 4 years ago

Where have you been the last 20 plus years? This is a subject that's been wrestled with in many high profile books and articles over that period and beyond, and how this is not self-evident to anyone who reads is beyond me.

Here's one article on it I have on hand, if for some reason a search brings up nothing: https://scholars-stage.org/a-few-more-notes-on-the-dearth-of...

geebee• 4 years ago

My big problem with GATE programs, as they were implemented at SFUSD, is the question of what happens to the kid at the 89%ile.

I am not at all against elite education, nor do I believe everyone should proceed roughly at the same pace. But I am very wary of an approach that imposes a bimodal solution onto what is almost certainly a more normally distributed population.

There are various ways this was implemented over the last 50 years. When I was in the SFUSD gifted program in the late 1970s, I believe it was done by some kind of IQ assessment. When my own kids were in SFUSD in the late 2000s, they took the top 10% of each class, as defined by test scores on the STAR test, which is an academic test. There were a few ways to test in (both verbal and reading in the top 10%, or one or the other in the top 10% two years in a row, or nominated by a teacher - there may have been a few others).

Ok, but then what happens to the kid who scored 89%ile consistently? Are we getting behind a solution that takes the top 10% off into a class which is taught at the 95%ile, and then leaves the 89%ile student to now be taught at the 45%ile?

Even people who support more advanced learning for more advanced students must see a problem here. Seems like we need a better solution. The top 10% isn't the only group that may benefit from a specifically tailored curriculum.

heurist• 4 years ago

If I hadn't been able to attend a "gifted" program, which has since been shut down, I would have been stuck in a rural D-class system that would not have served me at all. Instead I was able to be around peers with my interests and comparable learning abilities. It was a big early and positive influence on my life.

euroderf2• 4 years ago

I skipped second grade and was still bored out of my skull, and became the class clown. Teachers got fed up and in sixth they put me in with the Sweathogs. The bullying went to 11 and it broke me. So yeah, I'd say it's OK for a kid to skip grades in particular subjects, but to skip a whole grade in toto puts a target on a kid. My 0,02€, YMMV.

DaveExeter• 4 years ago

Did you return to the school as a teacher?

euroderf2• 4 years ago

No, not at all. Moved away and got into I.T.

motohagiography• 4 years ago

Even though I am ambivalent about gifted programs, when you consider the difference between an average person and someone who for various reasons is one sigma below average intelligence, and then consider the difference between someone who is two or three sigmas above average and the majority of people near the average, it makes sense to separate them somehow.

As a thought experiment, if your IQ were measured at above two standard deviations from the average (~100), it may be worth asking whether meeting someone with an IQ below 110-115 on Tinder could raise ethical questions because of the relative intelligence differences.

It's provocative, but when groups of outlier intelligence people can now find each other and co-ordinate online, you're into mutant powers risk, where someone could, for example, create a new world currency they alone controlled the value of out from under central banks, build a total surveillance panopticon in their dorm room, forge a conspiracy that infiltrated the cabinets of world governments and subordinate them to a single agenda, encircle the planet with a million cryptographically sovereign network nodes in space, enslave millions using a credit system, etc. We should have gifted programs to integrate these people socially and elevate the people around them, because otherwise you're just going to get super villains.

dam_broke_it• 4 years ago

First and foremost problem is selecting teacher(s) that are easily 30-60 IQ lower than the gifted kids....

rizkeyz• 4 years ago

I switched from a normal school to a gifted school at age 12. The biggest plus was that when all your peers have measured iq 130 or more, you do not have to feel ashamed to be "just curious" - which I believe most kids there were, albeit on very different levels.

People there really hacked themselves into all kinds of things, be it making your own PCB, learning six different languages, caring for paedomorphic salamanders, writing lyric, or building your "own" copies of popular software products. None of that seemed particularly strange to us young teenagers.

UncleOxidant• 4 years ago

We moved a lot when I was a kid in the 70s. Most places seemed to have a 3-tiered system then: TAG (talented and gifted), the middle track, and the remedial track. In one state (CA) I'd be in the talented-and-gifted classes for pretty much every subject. Then we moved to TX and I was in the middle track for most subjects and even in a remedial track for some. We moved between the two states a couple of times as my dad would be transferred. I preferred CA because of the prestige, but then get to TX and find myself behind in certain subjects - it was kind of confusing.

brummm• 4 years ago

In Germany they have a three track school system which is great:

- The first track is the high school degree that includes 13 years of school and afterwards allows people to attend university. Generally the students with the best grades attend this track. Everybody learns English as a first foreign language starting grade 3 nowadays in all tracks, but starting grade 7 students in this track have to pick either French or Latin as their second (and then in 9th grade have the choice to pick the other one as a third language). Further, math and science education are much faster and better compared to the other tracks. - The middle track starts learning French as a second foreign language in grade 9 and the whole track only includes 10 years. It is geared towards people that will do an apprenticeship afterwards, for example in business or some other non-university subjects. - The third track is the lowest track for the worst performing students and does not include any second foreign languages. It's only 9 years of school and these are the people that often go into trades jobs like car mechanics, contractors, etc.

Personally I think this is a great systems. Students that can learn more and faster get to learn with students similar to them and are not slowed down by students that can't keep up. Students in the other tracks afterwards can continue on to eventually get the higher degrees through various different ways if they want and are able to.

wink2• 4 years ago

I think you're painting it in an overly positive picture, because in theory it should work that way but in practice too many students are sent to the highest tier because of parental/societal pressure, even if not technically on the same level (so they're holding back the other), and on the other end the lowest tier is so riddled with kids that have bigger problems than lack of good grades so if you end up there it's also a problem.

Also I'm actually not sure I wouldn't have preferred to have a wider range of people in the school, especially because I also saw problems with wide gaps in progression in normal class. Not an expert but I'd hazard a guess that for every main subject out of 30 people you could have easily moved 10 up one class and 10 down one class and then the result wouldn't have been worse than repeating the same things 10 times, per subject, and not to the same people.. (Spoiler alert: I hated school, I wasn't a really good student, my main motivation for staying and not slacking off completely was that I needed to graduate in order to be able to study CS, but I would have loved to focus on some subjects and ignore others)

e-dt• 4 years ago

I went to the best high school in Australia, James Ruse. At that level gifted education is not really a question of 'gift' anymore but a question of outside tutoring. I was pretty much the only person in my grade that did not do tutoring. Some of my friends essentially had a second school that they would attend for the same length of time as actual school. This is also the reason that Ruse is 99% Asian and selective schools more generally overrepresent Asians; it seems like it's much more likely, culturally, for Asians to send their kids to tutoring than other groups. That's why can't I take seriously any of the hysteria about China taking over because of their 'superior work ethic' that you sometimes see; I've seen these kids, and a) they all did their assignments at the last minute and b) it wouldn't be that bad if they did take over because they are all perfectly normal people, not robots. Their parents just pay a man to lock them in a dungeon until they're able to integrate by parts at age 13.

zzzeek2• 4 years ago

I read this extraordinary quote:

When California’s Instructional Quality Commission adopted a new mathematics framework in 2021 that urged schools to do away with accelerated math in grades one through 10, it explained the move this way: “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents.”

I clicked the link and could find no such language or even any suggestion that high achieving students don't exist, and it had a lot of verbiage discussing the need for "high achieving" students to be challenged more than others. How a student became "high achieving", like if they were somehow born that way or otherwise gained such skills in early development, was not discussed, nor does it make much difference.

therefore I dont understand the point of this article if it's going to start out with claims that dont seem to be true.

FanaHOVA• 4 years ago

It's right in the introduction [0]: "All students deserve powerful mathematics; we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents (Cimpian et al, 2015; Boaler, 2019) and the “cult of the genius” (Ellenberg, 2015)."

[0] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/documents/mathfwchapter1.doc...

zzzeek2• 4 years ago

thanks for that! the link that was in the article's paragraph was https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/mathfwfaqs.asp where I still can't find the link, but clearly same organization.

but in any case, now I can see the context, and my point stands, the author quoted this entirely out of context in order to conclude erroneously that the authors of this document don't believe that some students are more capable than others. they of course don't believe that.

plandis• 4 years ago

Honestly I just wish I had classes which only allowed students who wanted to be there.

So much of my public school education was wasted on teachers having to deal with some subset of students who wanted to do nothing but disrupt everyone else.

It got better when I could choose AP classes since generally by that point everyone wanted to be in those classes.

lubujackson• 4 years ago

The bigger problem at SFUSD, and public schools in general, is being unable to expel or suspend kids, mostly due to fear of lawsuits.

Unintended consequence: kids have no fear of repercussions, teachers have no real authority and everyone ends up arguing about vagueries like "equity" and "giftedness" instead the actual work of education (which is increasingly left to parents and tutors).

bedobi3• 4 years ago

Hard disagree.

Gifted kids are a myth. Overwhelmingly, these kids are just privileged.

Privileged to grow up in an educated family, privileged to not have to help out at home, privileged to not have to take a job in high school to support a struggling family, privileged to be afforded extra tutoring specifically designed to jump through all the hoops in the system. (which don't measure talent or giftedness, just familiarity with and ability to jump through the hoops) (if you can even call tutoring a privilege - I know I would prefer if kids were allowed to be kids and not shut into a room with a tutor when they're already done with school for the day)

etc etc

and before anyone starts to reply "aKsHullY..." YES of course there's the odd legitimately GIFTED child out there, but they're a rare exception and even in the proposed system, if they're not from the right family, they wouldn't be picked up - other, rich, ungifted kids would take their place. Let alone that if you look at biographies of legitimately GIFTED kids, they often don't do well in or take well to school in the first place.

Basically to me this whole thing reeks of disingenuous masking of privilege as "giftedness" and completely misguided and mistaken ideas about actually gifted kids.

EDIT I should add that to really bring progress across the board, the focus should be on the bringing the bulk of the kids to the highest possible levels, and the most support focused on the kids who struggle the most. Privileged kids already have privilege - they will develop anyway don't need public support. Non-privileged kids do.

swagasaurus-rex• 4 years ago

You're basically arguing nuture > nature

I think in any school system you'll see some kids pick up the material, remember it, talk about it. Other kids won't. Blaming it on their parents doesn't really point to a solution either.

bedobi3• 4 years ago

You're basically arguing nuture > nature

No, that's completely orthogonal to all this. I'm simply pointing out the author is calling for entrenching a system where privilege is rewarded and exacerbated irrespective of actual giftedness, or whether any actual giftedness is a result of nurture or nature.

scarmig• 4 years ago

This is quite simply factually false. Socioeconomic status (so-called "privilege") has some correlations with outcomes, but there's wide variation in abilities even once you account for socioeconomic status.

Every kid is unique, and pretending that the top 5% of learners should be in the same classroom as the bottom 5% of learners does a disservice to both.

bedobi3• 4 years ago

I don't disagree with this, but that's not the point, the point is the proposed system seems to reward privilege, not ability.

ryan93• 4 years ago

The average math sat score for kids whose families make over 200,000 a year would place them in the bottom ten% of the class at Boston university

jedberg2• 4 years ago

I read an interesting book a long time ago. The crux of it was, "We spend a huge amount of money on the students with the bottom 2% of IQ, why don't we spend just as much on the top 2%". The standard argument was that the top 2% will find their own way and be just fine. I suppose that is true, but I don't think there were any studies to back that up.

whakim• 4 years ago

Central to that cultural history has also been the notion of meritocracy, going back to the Mandarin bureaucrat-scholars who obtained their positions through the imperial examination system. More recently, China’s communists have attempted to run a more vibrant economy by reintroducing meritocracy — and not just in government.

I want to point out that the "notion of meritocracy" in the Chinese imperial examination system was a myth. The amount of time and energy required to study for these examinations, the resources required to acquire the knowledge necessary to pass them, and the myriad ways that connections could help one bypass various steps of the process all added up to a system which heavily favored the elite while nominally remaining open to all. Needless to say there are some strong parallels to the state of education in the United States in the 21st century...

chernevik2• 4 years ago

I expect most of the criticism of "gifted" programs is embarrassment that the education system does such an awful job with most students. Many would prefer to do away with anything that exposes that problem.

Detailing the problems of the "education system" would be very controversial, as the schools have become political entities in their own right, parents are major contributors to the problems, and the culture we present our kids is a problem. For many it is better, read easier, to pretend those problems don't exist, and to do away with anything that highlights them. But that doesn't improve anything, and actually makes the schools worse.

dillondoyle• 4 years ago

Education in this country is sad we can do better. I don't have a great solution.

Money doesn't seem to be a panacea; except wealthier parents and parents who care, which seems to be by far the biggest driver of good outcomes (and the opposite poor).

But a good gifted program usually has other support beyond just curriculum. It's not just because the other classes have to be dumbed down so much.

Maybe my experience isn't universal. I was in the gifted program. I was ahead in math (not by as much as many here) and very gifted at music. But was in basic english lol. Completely lazy i never did homework and just got along by being smart. So for me it wasn't totally about just being in advanced classes.

It was more the extra support we had and the benefit of grouping those like minded students together. Just as friends, being able to grow help each other, etc. Had weekly small group meetings too. Kind of like counseling and guidance other students did not get.

More hands on learning. Which was the only time I paid attention or put in actual work.

Got special permissions, like I got to skip classes to do music. Access to more resources and connections to summer activities or outside education.

We had a dedicated gifted staff person who doesn't teach, just facilitates.

Their program was super valuable to me and pretty well known. I think a big draw for the school

tptacek• 4 years ago

A discussion about gifted classes and acceleration will obviously swamp this thread, but I want to take issue with the premise of the actual article. I think everyone sees in the San Francisco recall what they want to. The idea that it was a backlash against changing admission policies at schools like Lowell seems like the flimsiest of the arguments; Lowell admits students from just a tiny fraction of the households that voted to recall these board members.

I don't have an opinion about magnet schools and admission policies, and I'm sure, like everyone else is, that Lowell was a factor for some recall voters, but if it was the only issue, it seems likely that the board members would have survived the vote. The arguments about school closures and the renaming debacle seem much more plausible.

psanford• 4 years ago

As an SF resident that voted in the recall, I agree with this assessment.

pcwalton• 4 years ago

This is correct. My vote in favor of the recall was about Collins' lawsuit abuse, the school closures, the nationwide embarrassment that the renaming debacle made of our school district, and general discontent with the abuse of the SF school board as a training ground for future Prog candidates instead of a body focused on serious public service. Lowell wasn't even on my mind.

pnathan• 4 years ago

It's very frustrating trying to get good information about education. My kid is going into kindergarten this fall, and... its very hard to understand what is a good district and what's not. There's a thousand metrics, most seem to be... gamed to not get the administration fired for not following the current fad. I've resorted to using "average SAT score" as a proxy.

My kid might (or might not) be gifted; but he has highly educated parents; he's being exposed to concepts that might not be aligned with average educated parents. He's bright enough. I'm concerned that there won't be adequate content for him in the school district due to some concern that smart people demonstrate inequality or something.

I periodically wonder if https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron is taken as some kind of blueprint, to be honest.

Bostonian• 4 years ago

The author cites Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve (1994), but does not really address the elephant in the room: why are so few blacks in gifted programs and selective schools that admit based on IQ tests or other exams?

The standard deviation of IQ is 15, and a typical IQ threshold for a gifted program is 130, about 2 SD above the mean. Given that average IQs for whites and blacks in the U.S. are about 100 and 85, blacks will be quite under-represented in any merit-based admissions system. Similar white-black gaps are found in other tests such as SAT, ACT, and NAEP. Do we ignore that fact or give up on merit whenever it causes unequal outcomes?

bondolo• 4 years ago

There are going to be a lot of people in this self-selected group who will have had experiences with gifted education or, like myself, felt the distinct lack of those opportunities.

In my own case, I grew up in a rural area with very small schools and limited resources, what was available for enrichment was likewise limited but thankfully included at least libraries and access to computers and eventually the pre-Internet network community.

I don't believe in meritocracy in education--I saw enough inequality of opportunity to disabuse me of the notion that achievement in education at every stage was simply because the cream rose to the top. The best student of mathematics I ever knew became a surveyor because that was the career available to him--he HAD to be earning a living within three months of graduation. Exceptional ability, for him, meant only that he had the option of a less physically demanding job. Regarding real meritocracy on the achievement side there are enough stories like https://twitter.com/cesifoti/status/1494369809538195456 or almost any female PhD can relate if you care to listen to hopefully convince anyone that meritocracy is certainly suspect if not absent in education.

If it is not a meritocracy then what is the purpose of the highly competitive educational system including gifted programs? There is almost always some element of talent to be sure but there is also the luxury to pursue the opportunity, willingness or eagerness to compete, additional resources spent in preparing for admission and even just motivation or focus on the opportunity. Not all of this is dependent upon the individual, as others have pointed out, but also on parents who try get the best for their child. Perhaps the competitive system exists to make it easier for resourceful competitors to apply influence to get the result they desire.

I would prefer to see efforts which reduce the value of pursuing the competitive game. Why not self-paced programs available to anyone? Why not MOOCs? The self-selective participation even in high profile MOOCs like Sebastian Thrune's Stanford robotics MOOC points towards interest and self-motivation being the most important determiners. This seems like something we should want to reward. Maybe the reward for completion of MOOCs should be more individual attention up to and including enrolment. Perhaps there were even those who thought that self-enrichment was an inferior choice to more traditional approaches for optimizing educational competitiveness. Should we really reward that?

The threshold problem of competitive programs has always bothered me as well. Rather than a bright line threshold maybe we should be using chance to select amongst candidates; the higher the competitive score, the more likely your admission, but near the "solely by ranking" threshold choose among those above and below it with some degree of randomness. Why? Not just because it is unreasonable to regard the ranking criteria as infallible, but because selection on a narrow criteria is an imperfect determinant of outcome. Increasing the breadth of people who can enter the program will improve the selection of people who are motivated to apply and encourage applicants to try again. (Certainly I am only suggesting that programs only accept people which a high chance of completion in the program). Again, self-selection will drive those who really want it versus those who might be "qualified" on a competitive basis but actually disinterested. It grieves me when I hear of people graduating from highly competitive research physics programs or similar to go off and be a quant at some bank. Not because of my hatred of banks but because producing a quant is a wrong outcome for a competitive physics program; what the hell is the point if it doesn't make research physicists as promised?

naveen99• 4 years ago

Point the kids to hacker news and call it a day ?

ZeroGravitas• 4 years ago

I think lotteries are a useful tool to increase meritocracy, did this blogger ever expand elsewhere on why they think they are part of a 'war' on it?

I couldn't really discern any actual argument in this. From the blog title onwards it felt like it was aimed at an audience that already agreed and so didn't need to actually present any arguments. But I'd be interested if they actually have any as lotteries have a lot of useful applications but some people are wary of them.

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

Think of the time and energy we'd save if we just chose some smart people for a task rather than waste their time writing essays about their extracurriculars.

Then we could treat the people who don't make it as smart but unlucky and actually have a plan for them too, rather than discard them as stupid and further increase the competition for the few slots at the top.

The war on gifted education

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