6 ms·

Putting aside a second the debate about diversity... gifted and talented admission tests at four years old strikes me as far too young. Having witnessed my own

Putting aside a second the debate about diversity... gifted and talented admission tests at four years old strikes me as far too young. Having witnessed my own children and their peers grow I simply don't believe that passing a test at Pre-K is a useful marker of some innate talent, rather it's clued-in parents making sure their kid is able to jump through required hoops.

rayiner 1y ago
IQ is pretty stable from preschool onward: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16925 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16925. Especially in identifying low and mid-IQ kids (i.e. people who won't benefit from gifted education).
- dmitrygr 1y ago
  That is WHY gifted ed is being killed. Harrison Bergeron
- LUmBULtERA 1y ago
  That paper, which follows 106 people born in Denmark from 1975 and 1979, says there may be correlation coefficients of 0.48 or 0.50 for IQ groupings between ages (1) 4 and (2) 14 and 44 years. 0.48^2 is 23%, 0.5^2=25%, so if you accept everything else about this, this would mean 23%-25% of variance in the older years may be explained by IQ at 4... that strikes me as not enough to make your conclusions ("IQ is pretty stable from preschool onward) even if the rest of the study is concluded to be accurate.
dmitrygr 1y ago
> Having witnessed my own children == "Having witnessed my own friends, I simply do not believe that people who can juggle exist." . Gifted kids exist. I see friends' kids who read at 4 and they absolutely do not need to be stuck in a class with kids who still chew on their toys. The fact that you have not seen those does not mean they do not exist. As a second example, I was able to read before I was 4 and multiply 2-digit numbers before I was 5. Luckily schools did have programs that challenged me. I would have been much less lucky, had I been a kid in Mamdani's NYC...
- wbl 1y ago
  I mean many of the kids who read at that age do chew things still.
  - borski 1y ago
    True. For me it was my fingernails. :)
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    Though the ones who have been pushed to read as soon as they are physically able to may have also been shamed about chewing on things to the point where they stop doing that early too. Speaking from experience.
- borski 1y ago
  > I see friends' kids who read at 4 and they absolutely do not need to be stuck in a class with kids who still chew on their toys. Its worse than that; putting them in that class forces them into a situation where their only options are abject boredom (which kills motivation, drive, creativity) or to act out, because it is at least better than being bored.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    Honestly, boredom is the best case scenario. I had a class full of kids, who actively snuffed out any indication that someone might learn something. Some of the motivation was quite literally kicked out of you.
    - borski 1y ago
      Very true. I didn’t mention all the bullying.
- akk0 1y ago
  I have a university degree and I still chew on my toys.
mannyv 1y ago
My kids could read and do math in K, unlike many of their classmates. At that point it doesn't really matter, because K is really about play and learning the conventions. By the end of 2nd grade it was clear that they were bored out of their minds. So to private school they went. For parents with kids that aren't motivated it's hard to understand what the fuss is. But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation.
- LUmBULtERA 1y ago
  >But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation. Whether or not to cut gifted and talented programs is very much debated on the "left".
  - jen20 1y ago
    I've never heard much debate in the US on this, but in the UK it was very much the left that eliminated selective education in most of the country, and it's a political third rail to talk about it for any mainstream political party today (other than, no doubt, Reform - even a stopped clock is right twice a day, I suppose).
    - jhallenworld 1y ago
      This seems to refer to separate advanced schools vs. advanced classes that most in the US would be familiar with. One analog in my area (Boston) is perhaps METCO, where ambitious students in impoverished districts can be bussed to wealthier suburban schools. It's fairly benign compared with the infamous forced bussing of the 1970s- a judge forced lower class black and white parts of the city to bus students to each other's schools in order to eliminate segregation- it caused riots. Sure there was racism, but the main complaint was that rich suburban towns were not included. Another ongoing debate is over "charter schools"- where public funds are used for private schools that can be selective about their students. There are good arguments both for and against them. One against is that they can be for-profit even though they are not supposed to be. For example, they often pay rent to somebody- this never happens as far as I know for public schools.
greygoo222 1y ago
Why does it matter if it's innate talent or not? The point is to identify which kids will benefit from accelerated education.

rayiner 1y ago

IQ is pretty stable from preschool onward: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16925 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16925. Especially in identifying low and mid-IQ kids (i.e. people who won't benefit from gifted education).

dmitrygr 1y ago
That is WHY gifted ed is being killed. Harrison Bergeron
LUmBULtERA 1y ago
That paper, which follows 106 people born in Denmark from 1975 and 1979, says there may be correlation coefficients of 0.48 or 0.50 for IQ groupings between ages (1) 4 and (2) 14 and 44 years. 0.48^2 is 23%, 0.5^2=25%, so if you accept everything else about this, this would mean 23%-25% of variance in the older years may be explained by IQ at 4... that strikes me as not enough to make your conclusions ("IQ is pretty stable from preschool onward) even if the rest of the study is concluded to be accurate.

dmitrygr 1y ago

> Having witnessed my own children == "Having witnessed my own friends, I simply do not believe that people who can juggle exist." . Gifted kids exist. I see friends' kids who read at 4 and they absolutely do not need to be stuck in a class with kids who still chew on their toys. The fact that you have not seen those does not mean they do not exist. As a second example, I was able to read before I was 4 and multiply 2-digit numbers before I was 5. Luckily schools did have programs that challenged me. I would have been much less lucky, had I been a kid in Mamdani's NYC...

wbl 1y ago
I mean many of the kids who read at that age do chew things still.
- borski 1y ago
  True. For me it was my fingernails. :)
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  Though the ones who have been pushed to read as soon as they are physically able to may have also been shamed about chewing on things to the point where they stop doing that early too. Speaking from experience.
borski 1y ago
> I see friends' kids who read at 4 and they absolutely do not need to be stuck in a class with kids who still chew on their toys. Its worse than that; putting them in that class forces them into a situation where their only options are abject boredom (which kills motivation, drive, creativity) or to act out, because it is at least better than being bored.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  Honestly, boredom is the best case scenario. I had a class full of kids, who actively snuffed out any indication that someone might learn something. Some of the motivation was quite literally kicked out of you.
  - borski 1y ago
    Very true. I didn’t mention all the bullying.
akk0 1y ago
I have a university degree and I still chew on my toys.

mannyv 1y ago

My kids could read and do math in K, unlike many of their classmates. At that point it doesn't really matter, because K is really about play and learning the conventions. By the end of 2nd grade it was clear that they were bored out of their minds. So to private school they went. For parents with kids that aren't motivated it's hard to understand what the fuss is. But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation.

LUmBULtERA 1y ago
>But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation. Whether or not to cut gifted and talented programs is very much debated on the "left".
- jen20 1y ago
  I've never heard much debate in the US on this, but in the UK it was very much the left that eliminated selective education in most of the country, and it's a political third rail to talk about it for any mainstream political party today (other than, no doubt, Reform - even a stopped clock is right twice a day, I suppose).
  - jhallenworld 1y ago
    This seems to refer to separate advanced schools vs. advanced classes that most in the US would be familiar with. One analog in my area (Boston) is perhaps METCO, where ambitious students in impoverished districts can be bussed to wealthier suburban schools. It's fairly benign compared with the infamous forced bussing of the 1970s- a judge forced lower class black and white parts of the city to bus students to each other's schools in order to eliminate segregation- it caused riots. Sure there was racism, but the main complaint was that rich suburban towns were not included. Another ongoing debate is over "charter schools"- where public funds are used for private schools that can be selective about their students. There are good arguments both for and against them. One against is that they can be for-profit even though they are not supposed to be. For example, they often pay rent to somebody- this never happens as far as I know for public schools.

greygoo222 1y ago

Why does it matter if it's innate talent or not? The point is to identify which kids will benefit from accelerated education.