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If the issue is "not enough of an area's educational budget is devoted to AP kids", I don't see how that is solved by creating an entirely different school? If
by jmduke 10y ago
If the issue is "not enough of an area's educational budget is devoted to AP kids", I don't see how that is solved by creating an entirely different school? If there's enough money to create a school for gifted kids, then I think that money is better spent investing in the AP programs in those multi-track schools.
(It's entirely possible that I'm overlooking some nuances in how education budgets work, but I'm talking more in the macro sense.)
- ng12 10y agoA few bad apples. The kids who don't care spoil the opportunities of the kids who do. The two need completely different support systems -- kids who don't care need to be monitored, kids who do need opportunities. As a finite example: they canceled the "electives" at my school (students could sign up for a 2x/week lecture on an eclectic subject) because a lot of the kids figured out they were the easiest to skip.
- jmduke 10y agoI agree, but I think "kids who are actively harming the educational system" and "gifted kids" is a false dichotomy: the spectrum of "kids whose educational experience is damaged by bad apples" is wider than the gifted kids discussed in this article, and by only helping out that small subset I think we leave a whole bunch of kids left hanging (and arguably the ones who need a strong education the most.) (Our high school's approach to that was just offering "study hall" as an elective, with the implication that you could just skip study hall and nobody cared.)