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You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar l

You know nothing about teaching and education if you think this is going to help. It's going to hurt even more. The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. If you stick advanced kids with less advanced kids, both sets of kids will suffer because the advanced kids will be extremely bored and the less advanced kids will get discouraged because the advanced kids are so much better than them. It goes against the fundamentals of education.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> You know nothing about teaching and education That is incorrect. > The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. Yes, that's the thinking that justified tracking. Among the problems with segregated G&T programs, however, is that G&T-identified and non-G&T students are not, within each group, “of similar learning abilities”; Both have wide variation within groups, and individuals very often aren’t in the same relative position within their group in different specific subject areas. As much as tracking would make (simple, binary) varying ability fit into the industrial assembly-line model of education, it doesn't work well with real people in the real world (it works very slightly better than the industrial assembly-line model without tracking, and when that was the norm, it was an improvement.) But what works significantly better (though it takes more work) is to provide baseline curriculum with supplementation to individuals (in small groups of similar ability in the subject, where possible) based on ability. Which is what this proposes training all (initially) kindergarten teachers in, and hiring additional teachers in particular areas of need, in place of a high-stakes tracking exam for four-year olds. Its what has proven better than binary tracking in many places. (And it is, incidentally, what decided my family’s choice of schools for my son, who is now in kindergarten.) It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air. I'm replying here to your reply ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806171 ) to my comment. You make a bunch of really good points. I haven't been in the NYC public schools in nearly 40 years and the elementary schools in nearly 50, so I was unaware that the G&T programs weren't actually housed and run within each school. In fact, when I was in elementary school (1971-1978), the gifted and talented programs were just getting started, and were housed within neighborhood schools[0] as a separate track. After reading your (and a bunch of other) comments, I realized (as you already knew) that G&T programs had been moved to completely separate schools. Which is a terrible implementation of G&T. But even back then, only a small number of city schools had those programs at all (they certainly didn't at mine -- PS 84 and JHS 117). I was just a kid, so I don't know what justifications were made for moving all G&T programs out of the neighborhood schools. There should be G&T (or some tracked analog) in every city school, something to which you alluded. tl;dr: You were absolutely correct. My comments were based on an understanding that was decades out of date. [0] https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/metro-learning/spoils-whiteness-2019 https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/metro-learning/spoils...
- darthvoldemort 5y ago
  You are exactly the type of person who is pushing out the best kids into private school. Private schools in California are getting record numbers of enrollment after how horribly public schools handled the pandemic, and after how it wants to gut programs in the name of "equity". Your kind will reap what they sow, because it will create a 2 class system where anyone who can afford private school will go there, leaving essentially the economically most disadvantaged in public school. And along with the students, people will fight to cut money to public schools as well, since many will be paying for private schools. Kids that are advanced need to be with other advanced kids. Not all kids are equal in ability. Using weasel words to push an agenda of "equity" that hurts the best and brightest is what will kill public education and push moderate Democrats such as myself to voting for Republicans who want vouchers to gut the public education system.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> You know nothing about teaching and education That is incorrect. > The reason why you group children with similar learning abilities together is so that they can progress together. Yes, that's the thinking that justified tracking. Among the problems with segregated G&T programs, however, is that G&T-identified and non-G&T students are not, within each group, “of similar learning abilities”; Both have wide variation within groups, and individuals very often aren’t in the same relative position within their group in different specific subject areas. As much as tracking would make (simple, binary) varying ability fit into the industrial assembly-line model of education, it doesn't work well with real people in the real world (it works very slightly better than the industrial assembly-line model without tracking, and when that was the norm, it was an improvement.) But what works significantly better (though it takes more work) is to provide baseline curriculum with supplementation to individuals (in small groups of similar ability in the subject, where possible) based on ability. Which is what this proposes training all (initially) kindergarten teachers in, and hiring additional teachers in particular areas of need, in place of a high-stakes tracking exam for four-year olds. Its what has proven better than binary tracking in many places. (And it is, incidentally, what decided my family’s choice of schools for my son, who is now in kindergarten.) It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air.

nobody9999 5y ago
>It’s not the 1980s any more. Education has moved forward. Whether NYC will execute this well is, of course, up in the air. But that what it has identified is what has been widely used and proven better than binary tracking already, for the students that would be tracked into G&T, for the students that would not, for racial and socioeconomic class equity, and in basically every other conceivable manner is not up in the air. I'm replying here to your reply ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806171 ) to my comment. You make a bunch of really good points. I haven't been in the NYC public schools in nearly 40 years and the elementary schools in nearly 50, so I was unaware that the G&T programs weren't actually housed and run within each school. In fact, when I was in elementary school (1971-1978), the gifted and talented programs were just getting started, and were housed within neighborhood schools[0] as a separate track. After reading your (and a bunch of other) comments, I realized (as you already knew) that G&T programs had been moved to completely separate schools. Which is a terrible implementation of G&T. But even back then, only a small number of city schools had those programs at all (they certainly didn't at mine -- PS 84 and JHS 117). I was just a kid, so I don't know what justifications were made for moving all G&T programs out of the neighborhood schools. There should be G&T (or some tracked analog) in every city school, something to which you alluded. tl;dr: You were absolutely correct. My comments were based on an understanding that was decades out of date. [0] https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/metro-learning/spoils-whiteness-2019 https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/metro-learning/spoils...
darthvoldemort 5y ago
You are exactly the type of person who is pushing out the best kids into private school. Private schools in California are getting record numbers of enrollment after how horribly public schools handled the pandemic, and after how it wants to gut programs in the name of "equity". Your kind will reap what they sow, because it will create a 2 class system where anyone who can afford private school will go there, leaving essentially the economically most disadvantaged in public school. And along with the students, people will fight to cut money to public schools as well, since many will be paying for private schools. Kids that are advanced need to be with other advanced kids. Not all kids are equal in ability. Using weasel words to push an agenda of "equity" that hurts the best and brightest is what will kill public education and push moderate Democrats such as myself to voting for Republicans who want vouchers to gut the public education system.