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Greetings fellow travelers [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional ---- In response to OP's

Greetings fellow travelers [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional ---- In response to OP's link, my suggestion to primary schools would be to scrap the G/T programs, and instead focus on reducing class-sizes. You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. Give those timesinks a broom, instead.

rKarpinski 1y ago
You basically just described what the NYC "G&T" program is. All it is smaller class sizes and less disruptive students. There are only like 4 actual accelerated learning programs out of the hundreds in NYC's "G&T".
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  What percentage of NYC's students are in these programs? I was a student of public Texas ISDs, and briefly taught in Tennessee, so "public school" is an entirely different definition/beast than NYC's [probably better] education systems.
energy123 1y ago
Why does scrapping G/T programs have anything to do with reducing class sizes? You can do both at the same time, there is no reason to believe they are competing ideas.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  They are very much competing for funding; reducing class sizes necessarily means hiring more teachers, which requires more budget.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  Yes, you can accomplish both programs. However, the limitation has to do with funding constraints. src: attended public schools in G/T programs (IMHO: "normal" and "G/T" kids benefit from being taught together, in smaller classrooms) src2: attended college on a full teaching scholarship (am no longer teaching) — "taught"[1] the classes with behavior problems [1] Babysat; I was made the bad kids teacher because I was a tall footballer that didn't take shit from physically abusive bullies. I never beat a kid up (although many friends have, deservedly) but definitely restrained a few.
Gabriel54 1y ago
> You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. A good idea but not practically possible in any district, unfortunately.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  Yep. My child was just accepted into a G&T program; it replaces gym period once a week, and I believe the teacher is responsible for all the G&T classes in the entire district (3 elementary schools, 1 middle, 1 high) - so if she stopped teaching G&T and started teaching an additional class, it would help exactly one school's grade level. Maybe better than nothing, but not by much.
- teiferer 1y ago
  Not necessarily a good idea. Dealing with disagreements, distractions, conflicts, low and high performers around you, that's all part of social education. It's not explicitly on the curriculum, but if you just give everybody a super sheltered cotton-clad education environment until they are 18 then they will be better at using the pythagorean theorem or discussing Shakespeare, but they will utterly fail on the street and will scream hate crime the first time somebody disagrees with them at the workplace. I'm obviously exaggerating, but it's not purely good to remove "distracting elements".
- encoderer 1y ago
  You are right but this is a fairly new development, driven by activist lawsuits. It doesn’t have to be this way, these sort of changes are not irreversible.
svara 1y ago
> You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. Might very well be the bored gifted ones...
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  "...here, let me teach you how to sweep a floor, wise Bartholomew III" [hands intelligent student broom] "...now push. It's a simple task for a simple person." src: I was a bored gifted one; only swept the floors long enough to want to change my behavior(s). I was also once a teacher for children with behavior issues.
micromacrofoot 1y ago
Many public schools are going to opposite route, which is causing a lot of problems — classes are becoming fully integrated with both special needs and gifted students in the same room. You'll often get a teacher and a near minimum-wage assistant in one class... Generally this is a response to a massive teacher shortage in the US, which is likely caused by low pay relative to the sheer amount of work and angst that teachers have to put up with (from both parents and students). If the US were truly a society that valued education, teachers would be some of the highest paid professionals in the country... but teacher salaries have actually been declining relative to the average, and like many positions haven't been keeping up with the rate of inflation either. This is in addition to the long-known fact that many teachers end up buying their own supplies.
dugmartin 1y ago
> You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. You can't do this without getting sued (at least in Massachusetts). Source: my wife is a long-time elementary school teacher and my daughter works as a one-on-one aide while she is getting her teaching degree. I don't want to start of flamewar but the current "push in" model created by educational bureaucrats creates a classroom environment that caters to the "timesinks". When you have a good chunk of the class on IEPs (individual education plans) that must be followed by law the "high flyers" (gifted kids) mostly get ignored due to time pressure. Add socialization problems caused by COVID and reduced attention spans due to devices and chaos is always eminent. The stories I hear about daily classroom behavior would have blown my mind as a kid growing up in the 70s/80s. I just wish that gifted kids could get the same access to IEPs that the other tail of the curve gets. However, when you base your educational outcomes on high stakes testing it is just natural to ignore the outliers above the mean and focus on the ones below it. Again, I don't want to start a flamewar. Everyone has the right to an education.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  >I just wish that gifted kids could get the same access to IEPs that the other tail of the curve gets. It wasn't until I was flunking out of medical school that I realized the truth to your statement. I never learned how to learn (my 90's public school's version of G/T was to let a small group of higher-IQ children do whatever they want, including nothing). I feel that smaller class sizes would encourage smart-but-bored students to behave better (i.e. not be the class clown I was), out of fear of social isolation. In larger classes, it becomes more difficult for a single teacher (+aides) to impart learning habits upon ALL students.
- slowmovintarget 1y ago
  Also in Massachusetts... We found that all the "best in the nation" schools here, with the possible exception of Boston Latin, aren't really all that great. The reason they're measured "best" is because all the parents hire tutors and private instructors on top of the regular school day. Russian math, science tutors, English, music instruction... you name it. Systemically, this means the educators don't know how to teach. There are standout teachers, but by and large, the expectation from the "good" schools is that the kids are getting all the actual education outside the school system already. We found this to be true in Lexington, in Wellesley, pretty much all of the top schools in Mass. Boston Latin even has this problem, on top of the additional requirement to live within the city limits of Boston proper and hope you fit into one of their quota slots and your kid gets accepted. Private schools are a little different, but their costs, and the small percentage of acceptance even if you bear the cost, will take your breath away. All of this, and a host of other unpleasant features of public education, are why we chose homeschooling. It's been a huge sacrifice, but worth it.
ludicrousdispla 1y ago
My experience with G/T programs, both as a student and as a parent, has been: 1. the teachers have much more freedom in developing the curriculum which I assume is because their incoming students have a fairly high baseline proficiency in all of the required subjects. 2. bad teachers often get assigned to the G/T classes under the assumption that they can't do as much damage (which I can guarantee you is not the case.)
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  >bad teachers often get assigned to the G/T This is all relative (of course) but I feel the worst teachers for G/T are the ones that WON'T call certain shithead brainiacs out on our bullshit. ...at least that's how most of mine failed entire demographics. ¢¢

rKarpinski 1y ago

You basically just described what the NYC "G&T" program is. All it is smaller class sizes and less disruptive students. There are only like 4 actual accelerated learning programs out of the hundreds in NYC's "G&T".

ProllyInfamous 1y ago
What percentage of NYC's students are in these programs? I was a student of public Texas ISDs, and briefly taught in Tennessee, so "public school" is an entirely different definition/beast than NYC's [probably better] education systems.

energy123 1y ago

Why does scrapping G/T programs have anything to do with reducing class sizes? You can do both at the same time, there is no reason to believe they are competing ideas.

pavel_lishin 1y ago
They are very much competing for funding; reducing class sizes necessarily means hiring more teachers, which requires more budget.
ProllyInfamous 1y ago
Yes, you can accomplish both programs. However, the limitation has to do with funding constraints. src: attended public schools in G/T programs (IMHO: "normal" and "G/T" kids benefit from being taught together, in smaller classrooms) src2: attended college on a full teaching scholarship (am no longer teaching) — "taught"[1] the classes with behavior problems [1] Babysat; I was made the bad kids teacher because I was a tall footballer that didn't take shit from physically abusive bullies. I never beat a kid up (although many friends have, deservedly) but definitely restrained a few.

Gabriel54 1y ago

> You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. A good idea but not practically possible in any district, unfortunately.

pavel_lishin 1y ago
Yep. My child was just accepted into a G&T program; it replaces gym period once a week, and I believe the teacher is responsible for all the G&T classes in the entire district (3 elementary schools, 1 middle, 1 high) - so if she stopped teaching G&T and started teaching an additional class, it would help exactly one school's grade level. Maybe better than nothing, but not by much.
teiferer 1y ago
Not necessarily a good idea. Dealing with disagreements, distractions, conflicts, low and high performers around you, that's all part of social education. It's not explicitly on the curriculum, but if you just give everybody a super sheltered cotton-clad education environment until they are 18 then they will be better at using the pythagorean theorem or discussing Shakespeare, but they will utterly fail on the street and will scream hate crime the first time somebody disagrees with them at the workplace. I'm obviously exaggerating, but it's not purely good to remove "distracting elements".
encoderer 1y ago
You are right but this is a fairly new development, driven by activist lawsuits. It doesn’t have to be this way, these sort of changes are not irreversible.

svara 1y ago

> You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. Might very well be the bored gifted ones...

ProllyInfamous 1y ago
"...here, let me teach you how to sweep a floor, wise Bartholomew III" [hands intelligent student broom] "...now push. It's a simple task for a simple person." src: I was a bored gifted one; only swept the floors long enough to want to change my behavior(s). I was also once a teacher for children with behavior issues.

micromacrofoot 1y ago

Many public schools are going to opposite route, which is causing a lot of problems — classes are becoming fully integrated with both special needs and gifted students in the same room. You'll often get a teacher and a near minimum-wage assistant in one class... Generally this is a response to a massive teacher shortage in the US, which is likely caused by low pay relative to the sheer amount of work and angst that teachers have to put up with (from both parents and students). If the US were truly a society that valued education, teachers would be some of the highest paid professionals in the country... but teacher salaries have actually been declining relative to the average, and like many positions haven't been keeping up with the rate of inflation either. This is in addition to the long-known fact that many teachers end up buying their own supplies.

dugmartin 1y ago

> You should also remove any students from classrooms whom routinely distract from others' learning. You can't do this without getting sued (at least in Massachusetts). Source: my wife is a long-time elementary school teacher and my daughter works as a one-on-one aide while she is getting her teaching degree. I don't want to start of flamewar but the current "push in" model created by educational bureaucrats creates a classroom environment that caters to the "timesinks". When you have a good chunk of the class on IEPs (individual education plans) that must be followed by law the "high flyers" (gifted kids) mostly get ignored due to time pressure. Add socialization problems caused by COVID and reduced attention spans due to devices and chaos is always eminent. The stories I hear about daily classroom behavior would have blown my mind as a kid growing up in the 70s/80s. I just wish that gifted kids could get the same access to IEPs that the other tail of the curve gets. However, when you base your educational outcomes on high stakes testing it is just natural to ignore the outliers above the mean and focus on the ones below it. Again, I don't want to start a flamewar. Everyone has the right to an education.

ProllyInfamous 1y ago
>I just wish that gifted kids could get the same access to IEPs that the other tail of the curve gets. It wasn't until I was flunking out of medical school that I realized the truth to your statement. I never learned how to learn (my 90's public school's version of G/T was to let a small group of higher-IQ children do whatever they want, including nothing). I feel that smaller class sizes would encourage smart-but-bored students to behave better (i.e. not be the class clown I was), out of fear of social isolation. In larger classes, it becomes more difficult for a single teacher (+aides) to impart learning habits upon ALL students.
slowmovintarget 1y ago
Also in Massachusetts... We found that all the "best in the nation" schools here, with the possible exception of Boston Latin, aren't really all that great. The reason they're measured "best" is because all the parents hire tutors and private instructors on top of the regular school day. Russian math, science tutors, English, music instruction... you name it. Systemically, this means the educators don't know how to teach. There are standout teachers, but by and large, the expectation from the "good" schools is that the kids are getting all the actual education outside the school system already. We found this to be true in Lexington, in Wellesley, pretty much all of the top schools in Mass. Boston Latin even has this problem, on top of the additional requirement to live within the city limits of Boston proper and hope you fit into one of their quota slots and your kid gets accepted. Private schools are a little different, but their costs, and the small percentage of acceptance even if you bear the cost, will take your breath away. All of this, and a host of other unpleasant features of public education, are why we chose homeschooling. It's been a huge sacrifice, but worth it.

ludicrousdispla 1y ago

My experience with G/T programs, both as a student and as a parent, has been: 1. the teachers have much more freedom in developing the curriculum which I assume is because their incoming students have a fairly high baseline proficiency in all of the required subjects. 2. bad teachers often get assigned to the G/T classes under the assumption that they can't do as much damage (which I can guarantee you is not the case.)

ProllyInfamous 1y ago
>bad teachers often get assigned to the G/T This is all relative (of course) but I feel the worst teachers for G/T are the ones that WON'T call certain shithead brainiacs out on our bullshit. ...at least that's how most of mine failed entire demographics. ¢¢