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Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students [pdf]

2 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

barry-cotter 5y ago
> Executive Summary > America’s schools routinely avoid academic acceleration, the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students. While the popular perception is that a child who skips a grade will be socially stunted, fifty years of research shows that moving bright students ahead often makes them happy. > Acceleration means moving through the traditional curriculum at rates faster than typical. The 18 forms of acceleration include grade-skipping, early-entrance to school, and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. It is appropriate educational planning. It means matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student. > Students who are moved ahead tend to be more ambitious, and they earn graduate degrees at higher rates than other students. Interviewed years later, an over- whelming majority of accelerated students say that acceleration was an excellent experience for them. > Accelerated students feel academically challenged and socially accepted, and they do not fall prey to the boredom that plagues many highly capable students who are forced to follow the curriculum for their age-peers.
eesmith 5y ago
From 2004. Quick search finds no mention of "black" or "racism" and only one use of "African-American". Why are either of those relevant? Because a modern publications would have to include research which identifies racial disparities in gifted programs. For examples: > The Other Segregation / The public focuses its attention on divides between schools, while tracking has created separate and unequal education systems within single schools. -- https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted-and-talented-programs-separate-students-race/587614/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted... > Why decades of trying to end racial segregation in gifted education haven’t worked / Is it even possible to make a concept that has racist origins more equitable? https://hechingerreport.org/gifted-educations-race-problem/ https://hechingerreport.org/gifted-educations-race-problem/ > K–12 gifted and talented programs have struggled with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, native language, and disability inequity since their inception. This inequity has been well documented in public schools since at least the 1970s and has been stubbornly persistent despite receiving substantial attention at conferences, in scholarly journals, and in K–12 schools. The purpose of this article is to outline why such inequity exists and why common efforts to combat it have been unsuccessful. In the end, poorly designed identification systems combined with larger issues of societal inequality and systemic, institutionalized racism are the most likely culprits. - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00169862211002535 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00169862211002... > We acknowledge the injustices of structural and systemic racism and recognize the field of gifted education has historically been part of the problem by promoting these injustices, even if inadvertently. Some early researchers and thought leaders who influenced the field were involved with the eugenics movement, and early gifted identification and programming practices often became vehicles for de facto segregation. - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02783193.2021.1967544 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02783193.2021.1...

2 points by barry-cotter 5y ago

> Executive Summary > America’s schools routinely avoid academic acceleration, the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students. While the popular perception is that a child who skips a grade will be socially stunted, fifty years of research shows that moving bright students ahead often makes them happy. > Acceleration means moving through the traditional curriculum at rates faster than typical. The 18 forms of acceleration include grade-skipping, early-entrance to school, and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. It is appropriate educational planning. It means matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the student. > Students who are moved ahead tend to be more ambitious, and they earn graduate degrees at higher rates than other students. Interviewed years later, an over- whelming majority of accelerated students say that acceleration was an excellent experience for them. > Accelerated students feel academically challenged and socially accepted, and they do not fall prey to the boredom that plagues many highly capable students who are forced to follow the curriculum for their age-peers.

eesmith 5y ago

From 2004. Quick search finds no mention of "black" or "racism" and only one use of "African-American". Why are either of those relevant? Because a modern publications would have to include research which identifies racial disparities in gifted programs. For examples: > The Other Segregation / The public focuses its attention on divides between schools, while tracking has created separate and unequal education systems within single schools. -- https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted-and-talented-programs-separate-students-race/587614/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted... > Why decades of trying to end racial segregation in gifted education haven’t worked / Is it even possible to make a concept that has racist origins more equitable? https://hechingerreport.org/gifted-educations-race-problem/ https://hechingerreport.org/gifted-educations-race-problem/ > K–12 gifted and talented programs have struggled with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, native language, and disability inequity since their inception. This inequity has been well documented in public schools since at least the 1970s and has been stubbornly persistent despite receiving substantial attention at conferences, in scholarly journals, and in K–12 schools. The purpose of this article is to outline why such inequity exists and why common efforts to combat it have been unsuccessful. In the end, poorly designed identification systems combined with larger issues of societal inequality and systemic, institutionalized racism are the most likely culprits. - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00169862211002535 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00169862211002... > We acknowledge the injustices of structural and systemic racism and recognize the field of gifted education has historically been part of the problem by promoting these injustices, even if inadvertently. Some early researchers and thought leaders who influenced the field were involved with the eugenics movement, and early gifted identification and programming practices often became vehicles for de facto segregation. - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02783193.2021.1967544 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02783193.2021.1...