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It's long been a fallacy that you can sort young kids into high or low performers. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. By starting so young (kindergar

It's long been a fallacy that you can sort young kids into high or low performers. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. By starting so young (kindergarten!) in NYC they were creating the division out of essentially nothing. Long ago somebody tried dividing an elementary school class into regular and advanced students. At the end of the year, the advanced students had done better. The selection was a random lottery. The difference in performance, was entirely based on expectation.

moron4hire 5y ago
Was the study ever replicated?
EForEndeavour 5y ago
Could you share a link to that random allocation of students into regular and advanced? Sounds fascinating, though not surprising: imagine the confidence hit of being told by the system you're not advanced.
- smrk007 5y ago
  Why not just tell ALL the students they’re advanced?
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Because then they'll figure the game out and revert to baseline.
jollybean 5y ago
Perhaps more than just 'expectation' i.e. those who feel they are special and talented may actually strive harder. Maybe a bit of pressure as well. But there's a lot of truth to this I think people should cognize. That said, I'm wary of NYs move, in the later years of high school, providing programs where kids can be among other kids that really want to learn is powerful. At my school, they didn't actually 'vet' students in the advanced program. You just did it if you want. I think that's fair. You can have Algebra 101 and Algebra 101++, which covers more ground, at an accelerated pace, and it's your choice to join. I think that would work.
throwaway6734 5y ago
>It's long been a fallacy that you can sort young kids into high or low performers. As someone with teaching experience, I find this incredibly hard to believe if you were sorting by raw talent on not something that can be gamed like basing it on grades/good behavior. Certain students have a better natural aptitude for certain subjects.
arkades 5y ago
Education research is more heavily plagued by poor methodology than even psychology - the only reason it lacks a replication crisis is because it doesn’t have the academic integrity to bother trying to replicate anything. It is the epitome of shitty studies cherry picked to support the idealology/politics of the day.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  Thank you! I did a Masters of Arts in Teaching because it was required for me to teach without an education degree (physics) and man were those studies such bullshit, and the generalizations they drew were so bad. Glad I'm not the only one who sees it.
tomp 5y ago
It's possible that the average school provides insufficient challenge & motivation for the average student, so that rising expectations results in a rise of performance. It's also likely that an "advanced" programme was less tolerant to disruptions and required students to focus more. But regardless, that doesn't change the fact that there are difference between people, and they're shown very early in development. It's things like, a kid not understanding whether a train is alive (it moves!) or not. Later, it's things like a person being able to understand basic math or not (I was the smartest kid in class, and had to tutor one of the worst... it was painful - he simply couldn't understand math! I tried all different ways of explaining, ended up having to teach him a mechanistic formula "write parenthesis this way, then keep trying numbers until the sums match").
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  No program was provided. The kids were just labelled. The label was a placebo, and it worked. Straw-man examples of differences in kids are cute but not helpful. The issue was the imbalance in NYC advanced programs was clearly racial, which begs some kind of correction. Or do we have to resort to "Black kids aren't ever smart enough?" Is that your argument?
  - tomp 5y ago
    > Or do we have to resort to "Black kids aren't ever smart enough?" Is that your argument? This is a nasty lie that you just made up.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    Why would structural racism in NYC's gifted and talented program exclude blacks while including Asians as the largest plurality, despite that they are among the poorest demographics in NYC? What is the explanation for this kind of effect size?
giarc 5y ago
I also think at kindergarten age, you are actually just separating by age. A kid with an early birthday could have lived 11 months longer than a kid with a late birthday, and when you are only 4 or 5, that's a good chunk of your life. See Malcolm Gladwell.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Zababa 5y ago
Thinking that someone will perform better can help them perform better, sure. But that doesn't invalidate the whole thing. > By starting so young (kindergarten!) in NYC they were creating the division out of essentially nothing. I think that by kindergarten you already have lots of factors that will statistically influence school performance. I would argue that some will be environmental, and some will be inherent to the kid. > Long ago somebody tried dividing an elementary school class into regular and advanced students. At the end of the year, the advanced students had done better. The selection was a random lottery. The difference in performance, was entirely based on expectation. I mean, that's obviously going to be true. But how big was the difference? Was it bigger than when students are chosen with another method? Which method? Which one performs the best? What you're describing is basically the placebo effect, but applied to this situation. It's a good control group, and we already know that placebo works. The interesting part is to see if the current programs work better or worse than placebo, and by how much.

moron4hire 5y ago

Was the study ever replicated?

EForEndeavour 5y ago

Could you share a link to that random allocation of students into regular and advanced? Sounds fascinating, though not surprising: imagine the confidence hit of being told by the system you're not advanced.

smrk007 5y ago
Why not just tell ALL the students they’re advanced?
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Because then they'll figure the game out and revert to baseline.

jollybean 5y ago

Perhaps more than just 'expectation' i.e. those who feel they are special and talented may actually strive harder. Maybe a bit of pressure as well. But there's a lot of truth to this I think people should cognize. That said, I'm wary of NYs move, in the later years of high school, providing programs where kids can be among other kids that really want to learn is powerful. At my school, they didn't actually 'vet' students in the advanced program. You just did it if you want. I think that's fair. You can have Algebra 101 and Algebra 101++, which covers more ground, at an accelerated pace, and it's your choice to join. I think that would work.

throwaway6734 5y ago

>It's long been a fallacy that you can sort young kids into high or low performers. As someone with teaching experience, I find this incredibly hard to believe if you were sorting by raw talent on not something that can be gamed like basing it on grades/good behavior. Certain students have a better natural aptitude for certain subjects.

arkades 5y ago

Education research is more heavily plagued by poor methodology than even psychology - the only reason it lacks a replication crisis is because it doesn’t have the academic integrity to bother trying to replicate anything. It is the epitome of shitty studies cherry picked to support the idealology/politics of the day.

dorchadas 5y ago
Thank you! I did a Masters of Arts in Teaching because it was required for me to teach without an education degree (physics) and man were those studies such bullshit, and the generalizations they drew were so bad. Glad I'm not the only one who sees it.

tomp 5y ago

It's possible that the average school provides insufficient challenge & motivation for the average student, so that rising expectations results in a rise of performance. It's also likely that an "advanced" programme was less tolerant to disruptions and required students to focus more. But regardless, that doesn't change the fact that there are difference between people, and they're shown very early in development. It's things like, a kid not understanding whether a train is alive (it moves!) or not. Later, it's things like a person being able to understand basic math or not (I was the smartest kid in class, and had to tutor one of the worst... it was painful - he simply couldn't understand math! I tried all different ways of explaining, ended up having to teach him a mechanistic formula "write parenthesis this way, then keep trying numbers until the sums match").

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
No program was provided. The kids were just labelled. The label was a placebo, and it worked. Straw-man examples of differences in kids are cute but not helpful. The issue was the imbalance in NYC advanced programs was clearly racial, which begs some kind of correction. Or do we have to resort to "Black kids aren't ever smart enough?" Is that your argument?
- tomp 5y ago
  > Or do we have to resort to "Black kids aren't ever smart enough?" Is that your argument? This is a nasty lie that you just made up.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  Why would structural racism in NYC's gifted and talented program exclude blacks while including Asians as the largest plurality, despite that they are among the poorest demographics in NYC? What is the explanation for this kind of effect size?

giarc 5y ago

I also think at kindergarten age, you are actually just separating by age. A kid with an early birthday could have lived 11 months longer than a kid with a late birthday, and when you are only 4 or 5, that's a good chunk of your life. See Malcolm Gladwell.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Zababa 5y ago

Thinking that someone will perform better can help them perform better, sure. But that doesn't invalidate the whole thing. > By starting so young (kindergarten!) in NYC they were creating the division out of essentially nothing. I think that by kindergarten you already have lots of factors that will statistically influence school performance. I would argue that some will be environmental, and some will be inherent to the kid. > Long ago somebody tried dividing an elementary school class into regular and advanced students. At the end of the year, the advanced students had done better. The selection was a random lottery. The difference in performance, was entirely based on expectation. I mean, that's obviously going to be true. But how big was the difference? Was it bigger than when students are chosen with another method? Which method? Which one performs the best? What you're describing is basically the placebo effect, but applied to this situation. It's a good control group, and we already know that placebo works. The interesting part is to see if the current programs work better or worse than placebo, and by how much.