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.
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.
> they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here.
This claim about the USSR seems strange to me.
In high school, I had a couple of classmates from the USSR and they had been attending advanced schools since childhood. They were brilliant mathematicians. The state-sponsored educational system had recognized their talents and lifted them up.
I understood the collapse of the Soviet Union to be a net loss for educational funding, but I am by no means sure of this.
In USSR they actually recognized gifted students and placed them into specialized classes and schools where they would thrive. They treated it as a matter of national security. The math circles and dedicated schools with STEM had the state support. The "equity" applied to the later stages of life - an engineer or a scientist would earn not much more than a blue collar worker.
>In USSR they actually recognized gifted students and placed them into specialized classes and schools where they would thrive. They treated it as a matter of national security.
I remember decades ago my undergrad statistics teacher pulling up some data on collegiate club (like chess and poker, not like ultimate frisbee) winnings in competition.
I forget what the point of the lecture was, something about data distribution types, but the takeaway was that Miami Dade Community college consistently punched above its weight class since it educated a population that was on average subject to more USSR style "identify those gifted in a niche and develop their skills" than the baseline.
That said, there's a reason those people were attending community college in Miami...
>an engineer or a scientist would earn not much more than a blue collar worker.
The blue collar trades were preferred because you had more opportunities to get stuff to barter, better still if your job involved going out and about and doing things, you could meet many people to transact with.
In the USSR, engineers were effectively paid less than laborers in meat packing plants. The latter could steal food to sell on the black market. Engineers couldn't walk out with much more than pencils.
Same story for my middle kid. He’s bored out of his mind in 2nd grade math. He overheard me explaining square roots to his older sister while he was working on a coloring page at a restaurant waiting for our food. Then he pops his head up and says “so square and square root are the opposite of each other” (which isn’t something I said). He’s an exact clone of my brother, who has a BS in Physics from Yale.
It’s not because he “works hard,” and I don’t tiger parent. There’s just smart kids and average kids and dumb kids.
Yeah, we are free range parents, but we are kind of recognizing we should help him develop his math talent. I can do math okay, I majored in engineering, but he’s got a math intuition I lack. He’s also got a pretty short attention span, though.
In 3rd grade, my mother went in for a parent-teacher conference, and my teacher (who was a complete asshole) gave me terrible marks on behavior, but then said I was great at math. She literally said “whenever I have a math problem or something I don’t understand, I always ask Michael.”
My mom nearly fell out of her chair. What 3rd grade teacher has 3rd grade math problems they need a 3rd grader’s help with?!
My mom got me a math tutor literally the next day, and I’ve never been more thankful (in hindsight). That tutor focused on teaching me advanced math (for my age), and suddenly my behavior improved. Funny that.
So my recommendation would be, if possible, find a math tutor for enrichment. I don’t mean “start studying for the SAT,” so hopefully don’t take it that way. :)
>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".
Yes, but it's the furthest left that is for cutting gifted and talented programs, by and large. So while not all of the left wants to, the left left does.
i don’t think this is true at all. if anything the people i know with far-left tendencies want significantly more funding for school programs, including gifted.
what makes me question what you’re saying even more is i have right-wing friends who most certainly do not want more funding for any school programs, including gifted. and i have classical liberal friends who think we should give tax breaks for private schools for “gifted”.
It's so sad to see such vehement energetic invented madness. Pure fabrication & delusion, and there's such a massive podcaster and regular media system pumping out false idols to flail against.
I suspect your right wing friends would agree if you said “society should focus additional resources developing people who are naturally gifted.” If you frame it in terms of “school funding,” what you’re actually measuring is their beliefs about whether school funds actually reach the kids they’re supposed to help.
> i have right-wing friends who most certainly do not want more funding for any school programs, including gifted
This is a strawman, though it may not seem like one. I agree that much of the right wants less funding for public education in general, and/or wants more funding for parochial schools and the like. But that is not who I'm talking about.
Those on the right who support public education also support funding gifted/talented schools/programs, because they base it on 'merit' and you may have seen that word thrown around recently by that orange guy. G&T programs explicity fit into their policy and world view, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
> i have classical liberal friends who think we should give tax breaks for private schools for “gifted”.
Cool, but they're not 'left' by the American standards. Classical liberals are more akin to American libertarians in terms of beliefs/opinions. Which again, is not who I'm talking about.
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).
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.
Yes, the original policy in the UK was for separate schools rather than advanced classes - the equivalent policy for advanced classes was (is?) known as "streaming". I don't know of any charter schools which are for-profit (funding state students attendance at fee-paying schools was eliminated at some point in the 90s I believe also), but the nearest equivalent would be a "free school" which must be a non-profit.
Yeah, “left” isn’t a useful term in this context. As noted elsewhere, Soviet Russia focused on developing gifted kids. On the other hand, so does Iran, which has a super right wing government.
Can you share more about education in the USSR? My impression is that for all its faults, education is one area where the USSR excelled, with very high standards and outcomes.
TP is largely correct - there was no “advanced track” or any kind of differentiation at a normal school systemically. There were “gymnasiums” - a kind of specialized schools starting grade 8 or 9 and only in big cities and you could apply if you test well and/or your parents knew somebody who knew somebody
Your impression is correct. OP's fallen into the classic trap of equating the American "left" (which isn't left at all) with socialism, and that with the USSR. It's all nonsense free association of "things conservatives dislike", from the same mine that yielded gems like "cultural Marxism" (another nonsense).
Right the USSR was famously known to not aggressively coach and foster young talent in math, physics, and chess. There's literally no prodigies from there.
> 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.
Both US political parties have pushed for educational reforms that have resulted in this sort of accusation.
There was a long running idea on the right that faltering education was a national security threat, and naturally parents want their kids to have a decent education. Things changed a bit after George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" ended up extremely unpopular, but you still hear some of the same talking points.
You do know that for the last decade educators nationally have been talking about the "Mississippi Miracle" where they've gone from the bottom performing state at nearly every level to being about a grade-level ahead of the national average, right?
All while still remaining the poorest state in the nation no less.
In large part due to the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, sponsored by state Republicans that got bi-partisan support except for a faction of state house Democrats that tried to kill the bill because they didn't come up with it.
It was so effective that the model was copied successfully by other states.
You could not have chosen a worse example to prove your point.
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.
"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...
> 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.
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.
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.
There’s not enough empathy for the gifted and talented weirdos who get bullied by their peers at a pre-school age for being differently abled. But I don’t know enough about the program in question to say whether or not it really was for gifted students, or just for those whose parents happened to pull some strings, regardless of the parent’s income or wealth status.
It was a lifesaver. I went through it. I remember, distinctly, going from 'why am I here with all these other kids who just want to stare at the wall or play with G.I. Joes or stack rings' to an immense sense of relief when there was a bit more structure, a bit more freedom to choose what to do, etc.
But more importantly, when I wanted to understand or ask about some existential question, my teacher didn't say "oh that's cute kid, don't worry about it, just go be a kid and play with your friends." They took me seriously, chatted with me through my questions, and treated me like I wasn't a complete idiot, even though I was a child. That made all the difference.
And even more importantly, asking those questions didn't make me a pariah; instead, the other kids had those questions too, and we all learned from each other and grew.
If this sounds a bit absurd, I assure you I knew it then; I literally wrote about it in my journal in second grade.
My experience both personally and via my children is it's little more than a few more worksheets during the week. There is very little actual teaching going on. Just segregation from peers and more busywork. I was personally distracted by new busywork for a while because it was at least different than what I was experiencing in class. But I didn't learn more because of it. The only real difference was in high school where you can take actual accredited college classes in place of class with the normies. Everything before that was just to distract us so we didn't interrupt "normal" classes with our boredom.
After witnessing my wife work as a para-professional with special needs kids on a volunteer basis, the biggest thing anyone could do to improve overall educational achievements is to get them the fuck out of "normal" classrooms. There is very little reason for a non-verbal fourth grader to be taking classes with fourth grade "peers". While their presence may engender some empathy in fellow students, it is often the biggest distraction in the classroom and schools don't have the desire or resources to actually address special needs children in a way to not be disruptive. And I'd extend this further. It would be far better for everyone in this country if the bottom of the bottom was left behind (from an education, not a safety net standpoint) and the average could advance in pace with the more advanced students. And I say this as a flaming leftist.
I have zero issues with additional funding being applied to help special needs children learn and adapt to the world as we have to experience it. But I have a major problem with the slowest of society dictating the educational attainment of the average (or above average) member of society. No Child Left Behind means we have to run at the pace of the biggest fucking moron in our class. It shouldn't just be exceptional children with engaged parents who are able to escape that.
Smart kids can be a distraction as well. It certainly would have benefitted me to enter G&T at Kindergarten instead of 3rd grade. Much of my first grade was spent separate from the other kids doing 5th grade workbooks.
Bold move to take this stance when he would have caught very little heat for saying he wouldn't change anything. But I think he's right in that gifted education doesn't mean much in the earlier years. It mostly selects for children of means with anxious parents.
I wouldn't based any policy based on people's opinion IMO. There has to be a cost/benefit study to base your decision on. Anyway kids can be pretty smart. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this program is beneficial even that early in life.
Often times, educational programs are put in place without rigorous study, based on opinion. And the program design space is so large that it is hard to have a clear conclusion on an entire concept, like early gifted and talented programs.
My perspective is that the mos important thing in the early grades are that kids are engaged and not being held back. But there are many ways to address this.
I went through NYC's gifted program in early grades. I grew up on rent control and food stamps.
My closest school when I started, before the gifted program, was spending the majority of its resources on special ed programs and barely functional. The gifted program allowed me to attend much better schools.
The gifted program was also the basis of what allowed me to even interview to attend (and eventually test into) NYC private schools. Because of class I would not have had that opportunity otherwise. In fact, at first these schools didn't want to deal with me -- we had to be very persistent over a couple of years just to get me in.
Before the gifted program I was years ahead of my peers and barely getting an education in school. It wasn't without problems, but it definitely created opportunities I benefit from today that I otherwise would not have had access to.
Gifted Program is not just a cheat code for kids of parents with means. The parents of means are already sending their kids to private schools and gave up on the NYC public school system decades ago.
It’s this exactly. Gifted programs help many kids who wouldn’t have been able to access other options. If you close them rich people will simply go private, and the rest of the people who can’t afford 45k/year will be back where they started.
Oh, I agree that at some age most kids can learn most things.
What we’re talking about is learning some things much earlier than peers, and not all kids can do that; there are some kids who are simply accelerated in terms of learning, and if “unfed” that drive can quickly die.
i think we're on the same page there. my general thought is that all kids are capable of learning about different ways of thinking, which is what gifted education is all about. at what age level is a different issue.
from my memory, my mom taught units on photography, civil rights history, problem solving, reasoning, creative writing, deconstructing things to make something new, etc. i think most, if not all, students are able to grasp those things, though maybe that's my bias as somebody who got that sort of teaching both at home and in public school. sadly, all the non-gifted students only got the rote lessons that prepared them for standardized testing, but i suspect average students would maybe enjoy more school more if they had a more gifted-like education. gifted kids aren't the only ones who get bored by school.
Paywalled. What does the NYC gifted program entail at those ages?
For myself growing up in rural middle America, gifted in elementary/Jr high school was just a special activity once a week, not really anything that separated me from my peers.
But what are the delivered value of G&T programs to students? I never saw anything material from CA's GATE in the 80's-90's. Is NYC's program different? They seem like (probably not, but it's a risk) smart people inventorying programs but more likely they are bureaucratic money pile movers.
In a bigger picture of something perhaps different, shouldn't we offer investment in the top ~1-3% of kids with alternative schools that don't hold back their potential that will likely ultimately benefit us? If we're not committed to developing, attracting, and retaining brains, then we're setting up a brain drain.
>I never saw anything material from CA's GATE in the 80's-90's.
N = 1, CA's GATE program in the 2000's changed my life. "Being special" was a powerful motivator for a younger version of myself.
>shouldn't we offer investment in the top ~1-3% of kids with alternative schools that don't hold back their potential that will likely ultimately benefit us?
N = 1, what I needed as a child was a more G&T version of CA's GATE. I responded best to competitive sports and long hours of math and science problems.
I personally don't think that it is a big deal. Giving kids until 3rd grade to actually "settle" and demonstrate ability is a good idea. Equal opportunity until we can decide as a society who is eligible for "more practice".
Though, in reality, the rich and able will give their children more practice regardless, so they will reap more of the Gifted and Talented slots when the time comes anyways.
I was a profoundly gifted kid - taught myself to read just before I turned 2, was reading lord of the rings and the shannara books at 5, deathly bored in public school because my parents couldn't afford private.
To claim that gifted children cannot be distinguished from their peers at a very young age is flat out wrong.
The hard part is making bureaucrats identify gifted kids, not to identify them yourself. To a bureaucrat a kid that learned a lot on his own and a kid that had a lot of personal mentors to help them learn are the same thing, so both get put in gifted class, but out of those the kid that already is getting help doesn't need more that kid is already getting what he needs.
But it probably isn't bad to put smart kids together with mentored kids, matching smart with rich is a good way to help both sides.
No 20 month old “teaches themselves to read”. I’m sure youre gifted and it’s obviously insane to join this discussion period (who am I to change your self identity) but today has been a day full of allowing too many delusional people to be delusional.
You certainly don't have to believe me, but that's what happened according to my mother. My mother was busy with my twin sister and didn't have time to read to me, so I would take all the Berenstain Bears books and sit down on the couch and try to sound them out. After a few weeks of that I told my mother that I didn't need her help because I could read now. She didn't believe me and had me read some other children's books - turns out I could.
Yeah this is reasonable, they really shouldn’t sort kids for opportunities in early grades. Instructors shouldn’t have to focus on whether or not a kid needs more opportunity but on the kids who are falling behind; kids who are falling behind shouldn’t be treated as defects
The kids who aren't falling behind but are bored often eventually fall behind, because they did not have enough opportunities to grow and explore.
It's not only those who are failing that need help. (And I agree they shouldn't be treated as defects)
But gifted kids do exist, and they have all sorts of existential questions and concerns that other kids don't tend to worry themselves about. Unaddressed, these kids end up miserable, depressed, and anxious... which is why it's important to pay attention to them too.
Whether Kindergarten is the right age is a different question, but to imply that only those failing need help is simply untrue.
Individualized education would be ideal, but close to impossible, for obvious reasons.
The weirdly feels like a "can you believe he said that" piece. But he's not wrong. Having a two tiered education system from kindergarden that favors one group over another does not lead to good educational outcomes across the board. Nothing wrong with gifted or AP programs, but when they start right away and seem to be favoring one group over another that's a problem.
Ultimately this is a minor issue though. Nobody is voting for a mayor based on their view of a gifted student program.
I don't know about gifted programs, but anything that separates kids who don't want to learn from those who do is a good thing; far to much time is wasted in America's schools catering to bad behavior.
This. Frankly, it is aggravating if not depressing that it is somehow issue that should be considered at a national level. It is an issue that it even is an issue.
Citation fucking needed. You can't just claim any difference between people must be racism - if anything, that's a racist attitude to assume that in the first place, in fact.
I (and who knows how many a kid) was bored out of my mind all of kindergarten and first grade since I was one of the few kids who could read, and our gifted program didn't start until 2nd grade (I think in 1st grade I tested reading at 7th-grade level?). It's gratuitous torture to mix kids of different ability levels - both for the competent and the incompetent kids.
https://archive.ph/ioSa4
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.
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.
> they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here.
This claim about the USSR seems strange to me.
In high school, I had a couple of classmates from the USSR and they had been attending advanced schools since childhood. They were brilliant mathematicians. The state-sponsored educational system had recognized their talents and lifted them up.
I understood the collapse of the Soviet Union to be a net loss for educational funding, but I am by no means sure of this.
Around here there is a company called the "Russian School of Math", I always threaten to send my kids there.
In USSR they actually recognized gifted students and placed them into specialized classes and schools where they would thrive. They treated it as a matter of national security. The math circles and dedicated schools with STEM had the state support. The "equity" applied to the later stages of life - an engineer or a scientist would earn not much more than a blue collar worker.
>In USSR they actually recognized gifted students and placed them into specialized classes and schools where they would thrive. They treated it as a matter of national security.
I remember decades ago my undergrad statistics teacher pulling up some data on collegiate club (like chess and poker, not like ultimate frisbee) winnings in competition.
I forget what the point of the lecture was, something about data distribution types, but the takeaway was that Miami Dade Community college consistently punched above its weight class since it educated a population that was on average subject to more USSR style "identify those gifted in a niche and develop their skills" than the baseline.
That said, there's a reason those people were attending community college in Miami...
>an engineer or a scientist would earn not much more than a blue collar worker.
The blue collar trades were preferred because you had more opportunities to get stuff to barter, better still if your job involved going out and about and doing things, you could meet many people to transact with.
In the USSR, engineers were effectively paid less than laborers in meat packing plants. The latter could steal food to sell on the black market. Engineers couldn't walk out with much more than pencils.
Grouping students by ability was also common in the US (for the same national security reasons) up to the 1980's.
Same story for my middle kid. He’s bored out of his mind in 2nd grade math. He overheard me explaining square roots to his older sister while he was working on a coloring page at a restaurant waiting for our food. Then he pops his head up and says “so square and square root are the opposite of each other” (which isn’t something I said). He’s an exact clone of my brother, who has a BS in Physics from Yale.
It’s not because he “works hard,” and I don’t tiger parent. There’s just smart kids and average kids and dumb kids.
Please make sure your kid gets the enrichment he needs! Many people here would be happy to recommend resources.
Yeah, we are free range parents, but we are kind of recognizing we should help him develop his math talent. I can do math okay, I majored in engineering, but he’s got a math intuition I lack. He’s also got a pretty short attention span, though.
In 3rd grade, my mother went in for a parent-teacher conference, and my teacher (who was a complete asshole) gave me terrible marks on behavior, but then said I was great at math. She literally said “whenever I have a math problem or something I don’t understand, I always ask Michael.”
My mom nearly fell out of her chair. What 3rd grade teacher has 3rd grade math problems they need a 3rd grader’s help with?!
My mom got me a math tutor literally the next day, and I’ve never been more thankful (in hindsight). That tutor focused on teaching me advanced math (for my age), and suddenly my behavior improved. Funny that.
So my recommendation would be, if possible, find a math tutor for enrichment. I don’t mean “start studying for the SAT,” so hopefully don’t take it that way. :)
>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".
Yes, but it's the furthest left that is for cutting gifted and talented programs, by and large. So while not all of the left wants to, the left left does.
i don’t think this is true at all. if anything the people i know with far-left tendencies want significantly more funding for school programs, including gifted.
what makes me question what you’re saying even more is i have right-wing friends who most certainly do not want more funding for any school programs, including gifted. and i have classical liberal friends who think we should give tax breaks for private schools for “gifted”.
Complete rubbish. Far left tendency is to claim any promotion of children to gifted classes is racist and sexist unless its the right gender and race.
It's so sad to see such vehement energetic invented madness. Pure fabrication & delusion, and there's such a massive podcaster and regular media system pumping out false idols to flail against.
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I suspect your right wing friends would agree if you said “society should focus additional resources developing people who are naturally gifted.” If you frame it in terms of “school funding,” what you’re actually measuring is their beliefs about whether school funds actually reach the kids they’re supposed to help.
Interesting, but this is also presumably ( if partially ) why it is not phrased that way.
> i have right-wing friends who most certainly do not want more funding for any school programs, including gifted
This is a strawman, though it may not seem like one. I agree that much of the right wants less funding for public education in general, and/or wants more funding for parochial schools and the like. But that is not who I'm talking about.
Those on the right who support public education also support funding gifted/talented schools/programs, because they base it on 'merit' and you may have seen that word thrown around recently by that orange guy. G&T programs explicity fit into their policy and world view, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
> i have classical liberal friends who think we should give tax breaks for private schools for “gifted”.
Cool, but they're not 'left' by the American standards. Classical liberals are more akin to American libertarians in terms of beliefs/opinions. Which again, is not who I'm talking about.
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).
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.
Yes, the original policy in the UK was for separate schools rather than advanced classes - the equivalent policy for advanced classes was (is?) known as "streaming". I don't know of any charter schools which are for-profit (funding state students attendance at fee-paying schools was eliminated at some point in the 90s I believe also), but the nearest equivalent would be a "free school" which must be a non-profit.
Yeah, “left” isn’t a useful term in this context. As noted elsewhere, Soviet Russia focused on developing gifted kids. On the other hand, so does Iran, which has a super right wing government.
But the "left" that the parent post is referring to would argue their detractors aren't the "left".
Can you share more about education in the USSR? My impression is that for all its faults, education is one area where the USSR excelled, with very high standards and outcomes.
TP is largely correct - there was no “advanced track” or any kind of differentiation at a normal school systemically. There were “gymnasiums” - a kind of specialized schools starting grade 8 or 9 and only in big cities and you could apply if you test well and/or your parents knew somebody who knew somebody
Your impression is correct. OP's fallen into the classic trap of equating the American "left" (which isn't left at all) with socialism, and that with the USSR. It's all nonsense free association of "things conservatives dislike", from the same mine that yielded gems like "cultural Marxism" (another nonsense).
> It was that way in the USSR
Right the USSR was famously known to not aggressively coach and foster young talent in math, physics, and chess. There's literally no prodigies from there.
> 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.
Both US political parties have pushed for educational reforms that have resulted in this sort of accusation.
There was a long running idea on the right that faltering education was a national security threat, and naturally parents want their kids to have a decent education. Things changed a bit after George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" ended up extremely unpopular, but you still hear some of the same talking points.
This is not a “left” vs “right” issue. The world is more complex than that.
Find me evidence that mississippi is shome how raising up children and we can all believe your 'the problem with the left is bringing people down'
https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/illiteracy-is-a-policy-choi...
Good point, regardless of diversity or the left, yoh can prove things
Was the left operating well in missussippu prior to 2013?
here you go! https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/mississippi-student...
Nothing to do with diversity or the left
But, definitely evidencd of improvement.
You do know that for the last decade educators nationally have been talking about the "Mississippi Miracle" where they've gone from the bottom performing state at nearly every level to being about a grade-level ahead of the national average, right?
All while still remaining the poorest state in the nation no less.
In large part due to the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, sponsored by state Republicans that got bi-partisan support except for a faction of state house Democrats that tried to kill the bill because they didn't come up with it.
It was so effective that the model was copied successfully by other states.
You could not have chosen a worse example to prove your point.
Why does it matter if it's innate talent or not? The point is to identify which kids will benefit from accelerated education.
IQ is pretty stable from preschool onward: 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).
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.
That is WHY gifted ed is being killed.
Harrison Bergeron
> 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...
> 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.
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.
Very true. I didn’t mention all the bullying.
I have a university degree and I still chew on my toys.
I mean many of the kids who read at that age do chew things still.
True. For me it was my fingernails. :)
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.
There’s not enough empathy for the gifted and talented weirdos who get bullied by their peers at a pre-school age for being differently abled. But I don’t know enough about the program in question to say whether or not it really was for gifted students, or just for those whose parents happened to pull some strings, regardless of the parent’s income or wealth status.
It was a lifesaver. I went through it. I remember, distinctly, going from 'why am I here with all these other kids who just want to stare at the wall or play with G.I. Joes or stack rings' to an immense sense of relief when there was a bit more structure, a bit more freedom to choose what to do, etc.
But more importantly, when I wanted to understand or ask about some existential question, my teacher didn't say "oh that's cute kid, don't worry about it, just go be a kid and play with your friends." They took me seriously, chatted with me through my questions, and treated me like I wasn't a complete idiot, even though I was a child. That made all the difference.
And even more importantly, asking those questions didn't make me a pariah; instead, the other kids had those questions too, and we all learned from each other and grew.
If this sounds a bit absurd, I assure you I knew it then; I literally wrote about it in my journal in second grade.
My experience both personally and via my children is it's little more than a few more worksheets during the week. There is very little actual teaching going on. Just segregation from peers and more busywork. I was personally distracted by new busywork for a while because it was at least different than what I was experiencing in class. But I didn't learn more because of it. The only real difference was in high school where you can take actual accredited college classes in place of class with the normies. Everything before that was just to distract us so we didn't interrupt "normal" classes with our boredom.
After witnessing my wife work as a para-professional with special needs kids on a volunteer basis, the biggest thing anyone could do to improve overall educational achievements is to get them the fuck out of "normal" classrooms. There is very little reason for a non-verbal fourth grader to be taking classes with fourth grade "peers". While their presence may engender some empathy in fellow students, it is often the biggest distraction in the classroom and schools don't have the desire or resources to actually address special needs children in a way to not be disruptive. And I'd extend this further. It would be far better for everyone in this country if the bottom of the bottom was left behind (from an education, not a safety net standpoint) and the average could advance in pace with the more advanced students. And I say this as a flaming leftist.
I have zero issues with additional funding being applied to help special needs children learn and adapt to the world as we have to experience it. But I have a major problem with the slowest of society dictating the educational attainment of the average (or above average) member of society. No Child Left Behind means we have to run at the pace of the biggest fucking moron in our class. It shouldn't just be exceptional children with engaged parents who are able to escape that.
> which became a symbol of segregation in public schools
I cannot believe NYT readers would fall for such partisan editorialising.
Smart kids can be a distraction as well. It certainly would have benefitted me to enter G&T at Kindergarten instead of 3rd grade. Much of my first grade was spent separate from the other kids doing 5th grade workbooks.
Bold move to take this stance when he would have caught very little heat for saying he wouldn't change anything. But I think he's right in that gifted education doesn't mean much in the earlier years. It mostly selects for children of means with anxious parents.
I wouldn't based any policy based on people's opinion IMO. There has to be a cost/benefit study to base your decision on. Anyway kids can be pretty smart. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this program is beneficial even that early in life.
Often times, educational programs are put in place without rigorous study, based on opinion. And the program design space is so large that it is hard to have a clear conclusion on an entire concept, like early gifted and talented programs.
My perspective is that the mos important thing in the early grades are that kids are engaged and not being held back. But there are many ways to address this.
I went through NYC's gifted program in early grades. I grew up on rent control and food stamps.
My closest school when I started, before the gifted program, was spending the majority of its resources on special ed programs and barely functional. The gifted program allowed me to attend much better schools.
The gifted program was also the basis of what allowed me to even interview to attend (and eventually test into) NYC private schools. Because of class I would not have had that opportunity otherwise. In fact, at first these schools didn't want to deal with me -- we had to be very persistent over a couple of years just to get me in.
Before the gifted program I was years ahead of my peers and barely getting an education in school. It wasn't without problems, but it definitely created opportunities I benefit from today that I otherwise would not have had access to.
Gifted Program is not just a cheat code for kids of parents with means. The parents of means are already sending their kids to private schools and gave up on the NYC public school system decades ago.
It’s this exactly. Gifted programs help many kids who wouldn’t have been able to access other options. If you close them rich people will simply go private, and the rest of the people who can’t afford 45k/year will be back where they started.
my mom taught gifted education. what they teach to gifted kids should be taught to every student
Not every student could absorb it at that level. And that’s okay.
depends on the age, but hard disagree!
Oh, I agree that at some age most kids can learn most things.
What we’re talking about is learning some things much earlier than peers, and not all kids can do that; there are some kids who are simply accelerated in terms of learning, and if “unfed” that drive can quickly die.
i think we're on the same page there. my general thought is that all kids are capable of learning about different ways of thinking, which is what gifted education is all about. at what age level is a different issue.
from my memory, my mom taught units on photography, civil rights history, problem solving, reasoning, creative writing, deconstructing things to make something new, etc. i think most, if not all, students are able to grasp those things, though maybe that's my bias as somebody who got that sort of teaching both at home and in public school. sadly, all the non-gifted students only got the rote lessons that prepared them for standardized testing, but i suspect average students would maybe enjoy more school more if they had a more gifted-like education. gifted kids aren't the only ones who get bored by school.
Agree, but usually the gifted kid can solve the problems one or two years earlier than the average one.
Public school would be much better if there wasn’t the absolute instance on age-based classroom segregation.
Not all 6 year olds are the same - and we do significant harm pretending it is so.
Paywalled. What does the NYC gifted program entail at those ages?
For myself growing up in rural middle America, gifted in elementary/Jr high school was just a special activity once a week, not really anything that separated me from my peers.
Obvious smear hit piece.
But what are the delivered value of G&T programs to students? I never saw anything material from CA's GATE in the 80's-90's. Is NYC's program different? They seem like (probably not, but it's a risk) smart people inventorying programs but more likely they are bureaucratic money pile movers.
In a bigger picture of something perhaps different, shouldn't we offer investment in the top ~1-3% of kids with alternative schools that don't hold back their potential that will likely ultimately benefit us? If we're not committed to developing, attracting, and retaining brains, then we're setting up a brain drain.
>I never saw anything material from CA's GATE in the 80's-90's.
N = 1, CA's GATE program in the 2000's changed my life. "Being special" was a powerful motivator for a younger version of myself.
>shouldn't we offer investment in the top ~1-3% of kids with alternative schools that don't hold back their potential that will likely ultimately benefit us?
N = 1, what I needed as a child was a more G&T version of CA's GATE. I responded best to competitive sports and long hours of math and science problems.
I won't comment on NYC politics or the article.
A classic "but are you brave enough to hate the poor" move.
Someone has read Outliers[0] obviously.
I personally don't think that it is a big deal. Giving kids until 3rd grade to actually "settle" and demonstrate ability is a good idea. Equal opportunity until we can decide as a society who is eligible for "more practice".
Though, in reality, the rich and able will give their children more practice regardless, so they will reap more of the Gifted and Talented slots when the time comes anyways.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
I was a profoundly gifted kid - taught myself to read just before I turned 2, was reading lord of the rings and the shannara books at 5, deathly bored in public school because my parents couldn't afford private.
To claim that gifted children cannot be distinguished from their peers at a very young age is flat out wrong.
The hard part is making bureaucrats identify gifted kids, not to identify them yourself. To a bureaucrat a kid that learned a lot on his own and a kid that had a lot of personal mentors to help them learn are the same thing, so both get put in gifted class, but out of those the kid that already is getting help doesn't need more that kid is already getting what he needs.
But it probably isn't bad to put smart kids together with mentored kids, matching smart with rich is a good way to help both sides.
Who is claiming that? This sounds totally reasonable - for younger kids I believe socialization and play is way important than academics.
Other people in this thread
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No 20 month old “teaches themselves to read”. I’m sure youre gifted and it’s obviously insane to join this discussion period (who am I to change your self identity) but today has been a day full of allowing too many delusional people to be delusional.
You certainly don't have to believe me, but that's what happened according to my mother. My mother was busy with my twin sister and didn't have time to read to me, so I would take all the Berenstain Bears books and sit down on the couch and try to sound them out. After a few weeks of that I told my mother that I didn't need her help because I could read now. She didn't believe me and had me read some other children's books - turns out I could.
Yeah this is reasonable, they really shouldn’t sort kids for opportunities in early grades. Instructors shouldn’t have to focus on whether or not a kid needs more opportunity but on the kids who are falling behind; kids who are falling behind shouldn’t be treated as defects
The kids who aren't falling behind but are bored often eventually fall behind, because they did not have enough opportunities to grow and explore.
It's not only those who are failing that need help. (And I agree they shouldn't be treated as defects)
But gifted kids do exist, and they have all sorts of existential questions and concerns that other kids don't tend to worry themselves about. Unaddressed, these kids end up miserable, depressed, and anxious... which is why it's important to pay attention to them too.
Whether Kindergarten is the right age is a different question, but to imply that only those failing need help is simply untrue.
Individualized education would be ideal, but close to impossible, for obvious reasons.
Exactly this. I have lived this experience.
So have I. That’s how I know it’s true.
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The weirdly feels like a "can you believe he said that" piece. But he's not wrong. Having a two tiered education system from kindergarden that favors one group over another does not lead to good educational outcomes across the board. Nothing wrong with gifted or AP programs, but when they start right away and seem to be favoring one group over another that's a problem.
Ultimately this is a minor issue though. Nobody is voting for a mayor based on their view of a gifted student program.
I don't know about gifted programs, but anything that separates kids who don't want to learn from those who do is a good thing; far to much time is wasted in America's schools catering to bad behavior.
At this age it's probably not even about "want to learn" or "bad behavior" but "is capable of reading fluently" vs "can't read at all".
Clearly there's a middle ground, but that doesn't mean the extrema don't need to be separated.
This. Frankly, it is aggravating if not depressing that it is somehow issue that should be considered at a national level. It is an issue that it even is an issue.
I think you're missing the point. This isn't separating children on "willingness to learn" but based on race.
People absolutely will vote against someone because who's running on a platform of anti-intellectualism.
Whether Democrats will vote for someone because of anti-intellectualism is an open question, but it worked for Republicans, so it's feasible.
What is anti-intellectual about not having gifted programs in kindergarten that is a thinly veiled attempt at segregation?
Citation fucking needed. You can't just claim any difference between people must be racism - if anything, that's a racist attitude to assume that in the first place, in fact.
I (and who knows how many a kid) was bored out of my mind all of kindergarten and first grade since I was one of the few kids who could read, and our gifted program didn't start until 2nd grade (I think in 1st grade I tested reading at 7th-grade level?). It's gratuitous torture to mix kids of different ability levels - both for the competent and the incompetent kids.
So you didn't read the article and decided to hop on your own soapbox then. I see.