7 ms·

The unclear future for gifted-and-talented education

33 points by gnicholas 4y ago

newaccount2021 4y ago
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/4SGdL https://archive.ph/4SGdL
dougmwne 4y ago
I suppose it’s time to re-read some Vonnegut. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
gotoeleven 4y ago
Standards or diversity, pick one. Even if you love diversity, do you really want an affirmative action neurosurgeon? Or do you want the smartest kids to get the best education even if they're asian?
- rhexs 4y ago
  I’d like the smartest kid to get the best education and simultaneously the country to invest in its own people first instead of trying to import anyone and everyone to save on training costs.
  - gameman144 4y ago
    To clarify, you're against the abolition of these gifted programs in that case? They seem like a pretty direct solution to giving our own people a high quality education.
    - rhexs 4y ago
      Yes.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  I want every kid to get an equal amount of optimization.
  - gameman144 4y ago
    What does this mean? What is optimization in this context? Some kids (e.g. special needs or gifted kids) are going to require more hands-on time to reach their potential. For others, the standard curriculum is a great fit for them. It's a nice thought that all children get an equal amount of everything, but the fact of the matter is that not all children need an equal amount of everything.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  >Standards or diversity, pick one. This is highly reductive. What you're really saying is that some practices benefit one ideal to the detriment of the other, and that's a problem and a fair complaint, but it is an unrealistic and negative/provocative leap to imply they are 100% mutually exclusive.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    It is a leap to misquote parent as saying "[standards and diversity] are 100% mutually exclusive". They are opposing values. To focus on one is to de-prioritize the other.
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Outsider perspective: I can't see generalizing as anything but making things worse in the long run, unless capacity is too limited. Trying to generalize education means classes will have to deal with a far larger variance in education levels. Anyone who knows a bit of pedagogy and psychology would understand making things too easy or too difficult is a great way to make kids bored. Add a lack of discipline to it, and you're setting up for dysfunctional class rooms. And with the limited time and large classes, it's extremely difficult to appeal to both extremes, meaning most classes will appeal only to some small range while the remainder questions what they are doing. The primary thing I take from the article, is the immense focus on the gifted. That's the attitude I kinda get in general: kids at the lower rungs are just "there". They have to make it out themselves, while the upper echelons get all the benefits. Of course the less fortunate would fight back when the system itself is a positive feedback loop for anyone up high, and a negative one for anyone all the way down. Segregating based on class levels isn't just there to boost the high ones further up at the cost of everyone else.
nullhack 4y ago
"Brooklyn school-board leader NeQuan McLean says gifted programs have caused division and segregation in his district, and should be abolished because they take resources away from needy students." So, Special Needs programs segregate kids, and use resources for Needy kids. Seems self-evident.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  As a "gifted" student I was a needy kid. Being inappropriately educated when I was young meant years of overcoming the conditioning that everything I'm asked to do should be trivially easy with almost no effort. Boredom, isolation from my peers, and everything being so easy made interacting with the world quite difficult afterwards. Anxiety and frustration when something requires any amount of effort is a damn hard thing to get past, and reprogramming the low level responses to such things which were burned in in grade school is very hard as an adult. I lost a lot of quality of life as a result.
- morcheeba 4y ago
  I've always seen GT programs as a special-needs for bright kids who would be bored to tears in a traditional school.
afpx 4y ago
I got picked for gifted back when it was still a program to help defeat the Soviets. Then, funding went away and it became a status symbol. I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of public education. It was an awfully boring experience. It seems like it’d be great for a utopia of clones but less useful for diverse populations like we have. The only way to solve education is through the market, unfortunately.
s17n 4y ago
The problem is meritocracy. The only reason this is a charged political issue is that we have a system where money and power flow to the "best and brightest". This is a bad way to organize a society (smart people aren't actually better at running things) and has the side effect of putting a ton of pressure on the education system. The solution is less meritocracy, more democracy.
- dnissley 4y ago
  > smart people aren't actually better at running things Could you expand on this? It seems almost to fly in the face of the very definition of "smart"
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    The hard part of governance usually isn't figuring out how to do it, it's deciding whose interests you are going to serve.
    - QuarterReptile 4y ago
      This flies in the face of all my experience in management. Organizing people is mostly an exhausting grind. Maybe not hard work much of the time, but a lot of work, definitely.
- pharmakom 4y ago
  Weird definition of meritocracy. To me it means that wealth and power flows to best person for the job. This creates incentive for people to do what they are best at (in Pareto efficient sense). Governments job is to ensure fair play and a minimum quality of life for all
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  >we have a system where money and power flow to the "best and brightest". Yes, this is called autonomy. It's the basis of evolution, scientific inquiry, every concept underpinning democracy and freedom, technological progress, decreased infant and all-cause mortality, reduced poverty/starvation/privation/exploitation, and even the very idea that it's worth understanding or investigating anything at all.
twobitshifter 4y ago
>White students accounted for 58% of enrollment in gifted programs, although they made up 22% of enrollment in the nation’s public school system, according to nationwide data for the 2017-2018 school year collected by the Department of Education. Is it true that only 22% of public school students are white? The population of the us in 61% white, so this shocked me.
- dnissley 4y ago
  Yeah, this seems to be a mistake. Looking around at various sources it seems to actually be around 46%: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge/racial-ethnic-enrollment https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge/racial-ethnic...
- jon_richards 4y ago
  Is appears to be 22% in CA. 46% in the US as a whole.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Of course, if advanced learning opportunities continue to dwindle in public schools, you can expect that the parents who care about it will flee for charter, private, and homeschooling. Or at least those who can afford to will flee. The advanced students whose parents can't afford these other opportunities will be the ones who will suffer at a misguided attempt to increase equity. The true result will be largely a leveling-down of these students to their less-advanced peers. The beneficiaries will be wealthier students who will receive advanced education elsewhere, and whose academic achievements will be relatively more stellar than their erstwhile peers.
jon_richards 4y ago
GATE saved me when I moved to the US in 3rd grade. I remember getting marked wrong on “3-4=-1” because the class hadn’t learned about negative numbers so the “correct” answer was “you can’t do that”. Or my “which statements are true” answer getting marked wrong for being in the wrong order. I came from using electric saws and hot glue guns at age 5 to not being able to use a paper cutter until age 14. GATE would take us out of regular class for an hour a day. The school was on a rotating schedule, so each day we’d miss something different. It didn’t matter. I was reading a sci fi or fantasy book under my desk anyway. We’d still ace any tests. GATE wasn’t just accelerated school topics. We’d solve fake court cases (the upside down horse shoe is the one that stuck with me), create and draw 3d block structures on isometric paper (learning about optical illusions), sudoku, circle threading, logic puzzles, etc. It wasn’t just the activities, it was putting me with other people that also wanted to do them. It taught me that learning is fun. I realize that mixed-ability grouping is beneficial, but it’s also a huge burden to have to constantly bear. Getting out of that dynamic for an hour gave me so much motivation—way more than skipping a grade of math ever did. Then middle school came along and ruined it. It became an after-school class that thought of big homework projects to give us and we collectively said “fuck that”.
murphyslab 4y ago
The same thrust started happening in Canada recently as well. The Vancouver School Board recently eliminated its honours programs in math, science, and English in the name of inclusiveness: "By phasing out these courses, all students will have access to an inclusive model of education, and all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely". https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-school-board-cuts-honours-program-1.6068578 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-sc... There has been a similar move to eliminate the VSB's year-long gifted programs (Multi Age Cluster Class) by breaking it into six-week part-time sessions of which any student could attend some. Again, the proponents of the change see this as being a means to expand the "inclusiveness" of schools: “The model would enable students to experience full inclusion at their current schools while simultaneously receiving best-practice enrichment programming” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-vancouvers-school-program-changes-draw-concern/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/arti...
silicon2401 4y ago
As a child growing up in the 90s that would have a lot of labels people really sanctify today, gifted education and that kind of accelerated learning opportunity was the #1 most life changing part of my life. It single handedly taught me how to lift myself out of a cycle of poverty when there was nothing else: I didn't have the innate personality for it, I had barely any family, my family had no connections, I had barely any friends. Anybody who opposes identifying gifted students and helping them succeed is actively blocking one of the few resources that can truly help underprivileged children build a future for themselves.
4advanceded 4y ago
I live in Virginia; in Fairfax County. Unfortunately, I feel the publics lack of understanding of the need to provide advanced instruction to Students who are performing well above grade level is just as sound practice as providing appropriate instruction to students not performing on grade level. Those who wish to see the demise of free public education are currently fanning the flames of equity and race to create further divides. It’s time to improve the methods used to select students for intervention and to revise the language used to name the programs or services. Dr. Plucker, at John’s Hopkins has researched and written on the future of advanced education.
graycat 4y ago
Advanced education? Had a lot to do with that, did really well on Math SATs, ..., got a Ph.D. in pure/applied math from a world class research university, taught in three well known universities, have published in applied math, statistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence. For this thread, my views are different, and I suggest an approach that is simpler, easier, faster, cheaper, safer, etc. First, K-12 and anything advanced are miles apart. Basically the staff in K-12 is unable to help, teach, or guide students to anything both advanced and worthy. Partly the staffs set up advanced work as ways to challenge students to test them and see who survives -- it is like they hate the students. A lot of students get seriously hurt, and nearly no students get benefit. Net, for advanced work, f'get about K-12 -- the staffs are not qualified and will do more harm than good. Second, some good paths to advanced work are available in some of the top universities. E.g., I knew a student who as an undergraduate got a lot of tutoring from unique world class mathematician A. Gleason at Harvard. But getting into Harvard as a ugrad is super difficult. For the usual colleges or state universities, their faculties are poorly qualified. My suggestion: For the advanced work in academics (doesn't apply to the arts) just get a good path through a broad Master's in pure/applied math and pursue it via independent study of the best texts with some occasional contact with a carefully selected good mathematician. Pursue the path starting ASAP while in K-12 and then college, and don't expect any of the teachers to be able to help -- don't even mention your efforts to them; you don't want them involved. So, right learn calculus, set theory, abstract algebra, linear algebra, advanced calculus, ordinary differential equations, measure theory, Fourier theory, functional analysis, probability theory, number theory, and some applications to parts of physics, engineering, statistics, optimization. Go to some talks in good math departments and there look for research problems. Might also attend talks in physics, engineering, and computer science departments. Might also try other departments, e.g., maybe some having to do with medicine. Commonly they have a lot of important problems to solve and a lot of data but are not very good at math, e.g., statistics. So, might find a problem you can solve to get some results important in their applied work using some math, maybe partly new; then publish that. Try to publish at least one research paper. Write the paper; pick a journal; submit your paper; see what happens. Take the SAT exam in knowledge of ugrad math -- with the study of the topics above, should be able to blow that away like Michael Jordan in his prime trying out for a junior high basketball team. Pick some universities, the top in the world (it does make a difference), and at those some of the best profs (it does make a difference), make personal contact with the profs, pick a prof (make sure he is a nice guy and won't be mean to you), and apply for a Master's and to their Ph.D. program. May get to skip the Master's and go directly into research for a Ph.D. dissertation. By the way, never study any high school AP (advanced placement) materials. Instead, e.g., to learn calculus, just get the best freshman college calculus books (several) you can find (see what Harvard, Stanford, etc. are using; ask people; ignore Khan Academy and similar Internet sources). Now have your coveted advanced education. Likely, with what I have outlined, it can be easier to get a Ph.D. at Harvard than to be accepted as a ugrad at Harvard. Eventually you will discover that in high end academics "advanced" study, learning, and knowledge are not much respected; the high end understands clearly that no one can carry the library around between their ears. Instead the respect goes to research, finding new results -- sometimes that requires a lot of prerequisites, and sometimes not. Independent study? Need to learn to do that anyway. All researchers and all teachers, profs, and professionals who want to keep up have to do that. Independent study in math is relatively easy -- just be able to work the exercises. If also can prove the theorems, then there's no doubt you have done well enough. But, do get a good college math prof to read some of your first writing as you prove theorems -- need to learn how to write proofs and at the beginning have someone who knows how check your work. For a research paper with no exercises, learn, say, to prove the theorems. Why pick math? Because the best work in all fields of science and technology mathematizes the field. So, for whatever field you want, math, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, business, ecology, ..., the best background you can have is math.
zackmorris 4y ago
I was in GT in the 80s but my friends (who are at least as smart as me with better grades) were not. Basically I was Bart Simpson and incredibly distracting in class because I just couldn't stand learning the same things over and over from 1st grade to 6th grade. So they put me in GT to challenge me and keep me off the remedial track and staying after school with 4 checkmarks after my name.. which still happened constantly anyway. My friends grew up to be happy and successful, while I still struggle with depression and burnout. It's actually a running joke now on social media: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gifted%20kid%20burnout https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gifted%20kid... https://www.reddit.com/r/BurntOutGiftedKids/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BurntOutGiftedKids/ https://www.tiktok.com/tag/burntoutgiftedkids https://www.tiktok.com/tag/burntoutgiftedkids In some ways, the world is far worse today than when I was growing up, but GT filled my head with idealism. I thought we'd be on our way to a Star Trek meritocracy for all the peoples of the world by now, not various dystopias converging on A Christmas Carol or The Handmaid's Tale. People can vehemently disagree with my take on that but.. look at an arial view of Mexico City slums. Or the wealth inequality in Dubai. Or any glacier, coral reef or rain forest. Daily life for billions of people is a living nightmare and the things I personally care about are mostly in decline. Writing all of this out, I'm realizing that GT isn't what I thought it was (an art colony) but is more like Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Maybe someone predicted how bad things would get and created a youth league to someday combat it. Maybe now's our time, and we should quit feeling sorry for ourselves and the fate of the world and step up to saving it..
gnicholas 4y ago
I grew up in the 80s/90s in Sacramento and went to public schools that had great advanced education programs. They were all free, and they were open to kids no matter what neighborhood you lived in. The teachers were free to challenge students and the students loved the challenge. I think of one friend who immigrated to the US at age 11 and went on to Harvard and Harvard Law. What an amazing opportunity. Now I live near Palo Alto, and parents are suing the public schools (and winning) because the schools are erecting unreasonable and opaque barriers to advanced education. I never would have guessed that gifted education would be worse in the heart of Silicon Valley in 2022 than it was in Sacramento 30 years prior. But apparently the state changed the GATE requirements in 2014, and now districts can choose whether to offer it or not. We've had huge challenges in our local school, which doesn't want to support our daughter in learning math. We've not pulled her from the schools just yet, but we know many families that have, for either private school or homeschooling. It's a pity things have gone in this direction, and quite so far.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  after experiencing public schools in California in an environment that was hostile to advanced education (and writing about it here) I do not have much positive to say.. only an observation that there are multiple factors that can aggregate into an open, purposeful deconstruction of advanced placement education. > It's a pity things have gone in this direction that is putting lace on the latrine, in my experience. It is not a "pity" and that style of language is telling. There are confluent forces that prefer to deconstruct advanced education in a public setting.
- i_like_apis 4y ago
  What are the barriers in Palo Alto? I can imagine they are facing a very high percentage of parents pushing their kids as gifted. (And truthfully there are a lot of above average folks in Palo Alto. Not necessarily all the kids though.)
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    I live in Menlo Park, and the school has been very resistant to allowing kids to do learning above grade level. They have mightily dragged their feet on even assessing our daughter, and even after she demonstrated that she had a firm grasp on all of the math for her current grade (they chose not to test anything above that), they still made her sit through math instruction with the rest of the class. By the end of the year they finally let her do some IXL (math app) beyond her grade level, but this provides no instruction — just drilling on concepts you have already learned. The school refuses to set any goals for what an advanced student should learn over the course of a year. When pressed, they talk about thinking deeper about grade-level concepts she already understands. Of course, there is no way to measure if she is in fact thinking deeper about anything, so it is essentially an unmeasurable goal. And yes, there are many high-achieving parents here, most of whom assumed the schools would allow their students to study material at the same level they studied when they were children. Parents are beginning to organize to get the school to make this happen. In addition to seeing their children not learn, parents are upset that children are getting bored with school, getting sloppy with their work because they think it's too easy/below them, or thinking that "school is dumb". Perhaps most importantly, the children are never experiencing a challenge, which means that they'll be in for a rude awakening when they finally encounter one in the real world.

33 points by gnicholas 4y ago

newaccount2021 4y ago

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/4SGdL https://archive.ph/4SGdL

dougmwne 4y ago

I suppose it’s time to re-read some Vonnegut. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

gotoeleven 4y ago

Standards or diversity, pick one. Even if you love diversity, do you really want an affirmative action neurosurgeon? Or do you want the smartest kids to get the best education even if they're asian?

rhexs 4y ago
I’d like the smartest kid to get the best education and simultaneously the country to invest in its own people first instead of trying to import anyone and everyone to save on training costs.
- gameman144 4y ago
  To clarify, you're against the abolition of these gifted programs in that case? They seem like a pretty direct solution to giving our own people a high quality education.
  - rhexs 4y ago
    Yes.
colechristensen 4y ago
I want every kid to get an equal amount of optimization.
- gameman144 4y ago
  What does this mean? What is optimization in this context? Some kids (e.g. special needs or gifted kids) are going to require more hands-on time to reach their potential. For others, the standard curriculum is a great fit for them. It's a nice thought that all children get an equal amount of everything, but the fact of the matter is that not all children need an equal amount of everything.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
happytoexplain 4y ago
>Standards or diversity, pick one. This is highly reductive. What you're really saying is that some practices benefit one ideal to the detriment of the other, and that's a problem and a fair complaint, but it is an unrealistic and negative/provocative leap to imply they are 100% mutually exclusive.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  It is a leap to misquote parent as saying "[standards and diversity] are 100% mutually exclusive". They are opposing values. To focus on one is to de-prioritize the other.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

Outsider perspective: I can't see generalizing as anything but making things worse in the long run, unless capacity is too limited. Trying to generalize education means classes will have to deal with a far larger variance in education levels. Anyone who knows a bit of pedagogy and psychology would understand making things too easy or too difficult is a great way to make kids bored. Add a lack of discipline to it, and you're setting up for dysfunctional class rooms. And with the limited time and large classes, it's extremely difficult to appeal to both extremes, meaning most classes will appeal only to some small range while the remainder questions what they are doing. The primary thing I take from the article, is the immense focus on the gifted. That's the attitude I kinda get in general: kids at the lower rungs are just "there". They have to make it out themselves, while the upper echelons get all the benefits. Of course the less fortunate would fight back when the system itself is a positive feedback loop for anyone up high, and a negative one for anyone all the way down. Segregating based on class levels isn't just there to boost the high ones further up at the cost of everyone else.

nullhack 4y ago

"Brooklyn school-board leader NeQuan McLean says gifted programs have caused division and segregation in his district, and should be abolished because they take resources away from needy students." So, Special Needs programs segregate kids, and use resources for Needy kids. Seems self-evident.

colechristensen 4y ago
As a "gifted" student I was a needy kid. Being inappropriately educated when I was young meant years of overcoming the conditioning that everything I'm asked to do should be trivially easy with almost no effort. Boredom, isolation from my peers, and everything being so easy made interacting with the world quite difficult afterwards. Anxiety and frustration when something requires any amount of effort is a damn hard thing to get past, and reprogramming the low level responses to such things which were burned in in grade school is very hard as an adult. I lost a lot of quality of life as a result.
morcheeba 4y ago
I've always seen GT programs as a special-needs for bright kids who would be bored to tears in a traditional school.

afpx 4y ago

I got picked for gifted back when it was still a program to help defeat the Soviets. Then, funding went away and it became a status symbol. I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of public education. It was an awfully boring experience. It seems like it’d be great for a utopia of clones but less useful for diverse populations like we have. The only way to solve education is through the market, unfortunately.

s17n 4y ago

The problem is meritocracy. The only reason this is a charged political issue is that we have a system where money and power flow to the "best and brightest". This is a bad way to organize a society (smart people aren't actually better at running things) and has the side effect of putting a ton of pressure on the education system. The solution is less meritocracy, more democracy.

dnissley 4y ago
> smart people aren't actually better at running things Could you expand on this? It seems almost to fly in the face of the very definition of "smart"
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  The hard part of governance usually isn't figuring out how to do it, it's deciding whose interests you are going to serve.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    This flies in the face of all my experience in management. Organizing people is mostly an exhausting grind. Maybe not hard work much of the time, but a lot of work, definitely.
pharmakom 4y ago
Weird definition of meritocracy. To me it means that wealth and power flows to best person for the job. This creates incentive for people to do what they are best at (in Pareto efficient sense). Governments job is to ensure fair play and a minimum quality of life for all
QuarterReptile 4y ago
>we have a system where money and power flow to the "best and brightest". Yes, this is called autonomy. It's the basis of evolution, scientific inquiry, every concept underpinning democracy and freedom, technological progress, decreased infant and all-cause mortality, reduced poverty/starvation/privation/exploitation, and even the very idea that it's worth understanding or investigating anything at all.

twobitshifter 4y ago

>White students accounted for 58% of enrollment in gifted programs, although they made up 22% of enrollment in the nation’s public school system, according to nationwide data for the 2017-2018 school year collected by the Department of Education. Is it true that only 22% of public school students are white? The population of the us in 61% white, so this shocked me.

dnissley 4y ago
Yeah, this seems to be a mistake. Looking around at various sources it seems to actually be around 46%: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge/racial-ethnic-enrollment https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cge/racial-ethnic...
jon_richards 4y ago
Is appears to be 22% in CA. 46% in the US as a whole.
gnicholas 4y ago
Of course, if advanced learning opportunities continue to dwindle in public schools, you can expect that the parents who care about it will flee for charter, private, and homeschooling. Or at least those who can afford to will flee. The advanced students whose parents can't afford these other opportunities will be the ones who will suffer at a misguided attempt to increase equity. The true result will be largely a leveling-down of these students to their less-advanced peers. The beneficiaries will be wealthier students who will receive advanced education elsewhere, and whose academic achievements will be relatively more stellar than their erstwhile peers.

jon_richards 4y ago

GATE saved me when I moved to the US in 3rd grade. I remember getting marked wrong on “3-4=-1” because the class hadn’t learned about negative numbers so the “correct” answer was “you can’t do that”. Or my “which statements are true” answer getting marked wrong for being in the wrong order. I came from using electric saws and hot glue guns at age 5 to not being able to use a paper cutter until age 14. GATE would take us out of regular class for an hour a day. The school was on a rotating schedule, so each day we’d miss something different. It didn’t matter. I was reading a sci fi or fantasy book under my desk anyway. We’d still ace any tests. GATE wasn’t just accelerated school topics. We’d solve fake court cases (the upside down horse shoe is the one that stuck with me), create and draw 3d block structures on isometric paper (learning about optical illusions), sudoku, circle threading, logic puzzles, etc. It wasn’t just the activities, it was putting me with other people that also wanted to do them. It taught me that learning is fun. I realize that mixed-ability grouping is beneficial, but it’s also a huge burden to have to constantly bear. Getting out of that dynamic for an hour gave me so much motivation—way more than skipping a grade of math ever did. Then middle school came along and ruined it. It became an after-school class that thought of big homework projects to give us and we collectively said “fuck that”.

murphyslab 4y ago

The same thrust started happening in Canada recently as well. The Vancouver School Board recently eliminated its honours programs in math, science, and English in the name of inclusiveness: "By phasing out these courses, all students will have access to an inclusive model of education, and all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely". https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-school-board-cuts-honours-program-1.6068578 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-sc... There has been a similar move to eliminate the VSB's year-long gifted programs (Multi Age Cluster Class) by breaking it into six-week part-time sessions of which any student could attend some. Again, the proponents of the change see this as being a means to expand the "inclusiveness" of schools: “The model would enable students to experience full inclusion at their current schools while simultaneously receiving best-practice enrichment programming” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-vancouvers-school-program-changes-draw-concern/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/arti...

silicon2401 4y ago

As a child growing up in the 90s that would have a lot of labels people really sanctify today, gifted education and that kind of accelerated learning opportunity was the #1 most life changing part of my life. It single handedly taught me how to lift myself out of a cycle of poverty when there was nothing else: I didn't have the innate personality for it, I had barely any family, my family had no connections, I had barely any friends. Anybody who opposes identifying gifted students and helping them succeed is actively blocking one of the few resources that can truly help underprivileged children build a future for themselves.

4advanceded 4y ago

I live in Virginia; in Fairfax County. Unfortunately, I feel the publics lack of understanding of the need to provide advanced instruction to Students who are performing well above grade level is just as sound practice as providing appropriate instruction to students not performing on grade level. Those who wish to see the demise of free public education are currently fanning the flames of equity and race to create further divides. It’s time to improve the methods used to select students for intervention and to revise the language used to name the programs or services. Dr. Plucker, at John’s Hopkins has researched and written on the future of advanced education.

graycat 4y ago

Advanced education? Had a lot to do with that, did really well on Math SATs, ..., got a Ph.D. in pure/applied math from a world class research university, taught in three well known universities, have published in applied math, statistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence. For this thread, my views are different, and I suggest an approach that is simpler, easier, faster, cheaper, safer, etc. First, K-12 and anything advanced are miles apart. Basically the staff in K-12 is unable to help, teach, or guide students to anything both advanced and worthy. Partly the staffs set up advanced work as ways to challenge students to test them and see who survives -- it is like they hate the students. A lot of students get seriously hurt, and nearly no students get benefit. Net, for advanced work, f'get about K-12 -- the staffs are not qualified and will do more harm than good. Second, some good paths to advanced work are available in some of the top universities. E.g., I knew a student who as an undergraduate got a lot of tutoring from unique world class mathematician A. Gleason at Harvard. But getting into Harvard as a ugrad is super difficult. For the usual colleges or state universities, their faculties are poorly qualified. My suggestion: For the advanced work in academics (doesn't apply to the arts) just get a good path through a broad Master's in pure/applied math and pursue it via independent study of the best texts with some occasional contact with a carefully selected good mathematician. Pursue the path starting ASAP while in K-12 and then college, and don't expect any of the teachers to be able to help -- don't even mention your efforts to them; you don't want them involved. So, right learn calculus, set theory, abstract algebra, linear algebra, advanced calculus, ordinary differential equations, measure theory, Fourier theory, functional analysis, probability theory, number theory, and some applications to parts of physics, engineering, statistics, optimization. Go to some talks in good math departments and there look for research problems. Might also attend talks in physics, engineering, and computer science departments. Might also try other departments, e.g., maybe some having to do with medicine. Commonly they have a lot of important problems to solve and a lot of data but are not very good at math, e.g., statistics. So, might find a problem you can solve to get some results important in their applied work using some math, maybe partly new; then publish that. Try to publish at least one research paper. Write the paper; pick a journal; submit your paper; see what happens. Take the SAT exam in knowledge of ugrad math -- with the study of the topics above, should be able to blow that away like Michael Jordan in his prime trying out for a junior high basketball team. Pick some universities, the top in the world (it does make a difference), and at those some of the best profs (it does make a difference), make personal contact with the profs, pick a prof (make sure he is a nice guy and won't be mean to you), and apply for a Master's and to their Ph.D. program. May get to skip the Master's and go directly into research for a Ph.D. dissertation. By the way, never study any high school AP (advanced placement) materials. Instead, e.g., to learn calculus, just get the best freshman college calculus books (several) you can find (see what Harvard, Stanford, etc. are using; ask people; ignore Khan Academy and similar Internet sources). Now have your coveted advanced education. Likely, with what I have outlined, it can be easier to get a Ph.D. at Harvard than to be accepted as a ugrad at Harvard. Eventually you will discover that in high end academics "advanced" study, learning, and knowledge are not much respected; the high end understands clearly that no one can carry the library around between their ears. Instead the respect goes to research, finding new results -- sometimes that requires a lot of prerequisites, and sometimes not. Independent study? Need to learn to do that anyway. All researchers and all teachers, profs, and professionals who want to keep up have to do that. Independent study in math is relatively easy -- just be able to work the exercises. If also can prove the theorems, then there's no doubt you have done well enough. But, do get a good college math prof to read some of your first writing as you prove theorems -- need to learn how to write proofs and at the beginning have someone who knows how check your work. For a research paper with no exercises, learn, say, to prove the theorems. Why pick math? Because the best work in all fields of science and technology mathematizes the field. So, for whatever field you want, math, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, business, ecology, ..., the best background you can have is math.

zackmorris 4y ago

I was in GT in the 80s but my friends (who are at least as smart as me with better grades) were not. Basically I was Bart Simpson and incredibly distracting in class because I just couldn't stand learning the same things over and over from 1st grade to 6th grade. So they put me in GT to challenge me and keep me off the remedial track and staying after school with 4 checkmarks after my name.. which still happened constantly anyway. My friends grew up to be happy and successful, while I still struggle with depression and burnout. It's actually a running joke now on social media: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gifted%20kid%20burnout https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gifted%20kid... https://www.reddit.com/r/BurntOutGiftedKids/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BurntOutGiftedKids/ https://www.tiktok.com/tag/burntoutgiftedkids https://www.tiktok.com/tag/burntoutgiftedkids In some ways, the world is far worse today than when I was growing up, but GT filled my head with idealism. I thought we'd be on our way to a Star Trek meritocracy for all the peoples of the world by now, not various dystopias converging on A Christmas Carol or The Handmaid's Tale. People can vehemently disagree with my take on that but.. look at an arial view of Mexico City slums. Or the wealth inequality in Dubai. Or any glacier, coral reef or rain forest. Daily life for billions of people is a living nightmare and the things I personally care about are mostly in decline. Writing all of this out, I'm realizing that GT isn't what I thought it was (an art colony) but is more like Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Maybe someone predicted how bad things would get and created a youth league to someday combat it. Maybe now's our time, and we should quit feeling sorry for ourselves and the fate of the world and step up to saving it..

gnicholas 4y ago

I grew up in the 80s/90s in Sacramento and went to public schools that had great advanced education programs. They were all free, and they were open to kids no matter what neighborhood you lived in. The teachers were free to challenge students and the students loved the challenge. I think of one friend who immigrated to the US at age 11 and went on to Harvard and Harvard Law. What an amazing opportunity. Now I live near Palo Alto, and parents are suing the public schools (and winning) because the schools are erecting unreasonable and opaque barriers to advanced education. I never would have guessed that gifted education would be worse in the heart of Silicon Valley in 2022 than it was in Sacramento 30 years prior. But apparently the state changed the GATE requirements in 2014, and now districts can choose whether to offer it or not. We've had huge challenges in our local school, which doesn't want to support our daughter in learning math. We've not pulled her from the schools just yet, but we know many families that have, for either private school or homeschooling. It's a pity things have gone in this direction, and quite so far.

mistrial9 4y ago
after experiencing public schools in California in an environment that was hostile to advanced education (and writing about it here) I do not have much positive to say.. only an observation that there are multiple factors that can aggregate into an open, purposeful deconstruction of advanced placement education. > It's a pity things have gone in this direction that is putting lace on the latrine, in my experience. It is not a "pity" and that style of language is telling. There are confluent forces that prefer to deconstruct advanced education in a public setting.
i_like_apis 4y ago
What are the barriers in Palo Alto? I can imagine they are facing a very high percentage of parents pushing their kids as gifted. (And truthfully there are a lot of above average folks in Palo Alto. Not necessarily all the kids though.)
- gnicholas 4y ago
  I live in Menlo Park, and the school has been very resistant to allowing kids to do learning above grade level. They have mightily dragged their feet on even assessing our daughter, and even after she demonstrated that she had a firm grasp on all of the math for her current grade (they chose not to test anything above that), they still made her sit through math instruction with the rest of the class. By the end of the year they finally let her do some IXL (math app) beyond her grade level, but this provides no instruction — just drilling on concepts you have already learned. The school refuses to set any goals for what an advanced student should learn over the course of a year. When pressed, they talk about thinking deeper about grade-level concepts she already understands. Of course, there is no way to measure if she is in fact thinking deeper about anything, so it is essentially an unmeasurable goal. And yes, there are many high-achieving parents here, most of whom assumed the schools would allow their students to study material at the same level they studied when they were children. Parents are beginning to organize to get the school to make this happen. In addition to seeing their children not learn, parents are upset that children are getting bored with school, getting sloppy with their work because they think it's too easy/below them, or thinking that "school is dumb". Perhaps most importantly, the children are never experiencing a challenge, which means that they'll be in for a rude awakening when they finally encounter one in the real world.