
School for the Gifted, and Only the Gifted - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/education/19gifted.html
======
RevRal
I was a jackass child. Too arrogant for my own good.

I remember figuring out how to go from the number one, to a hundred, before
knowing the names of the numbers. This was before I set foot in a school. I
was ahead of the game before I was ever in the game.

I could have benefited from a school for the gifted, but my dad was having a
lot of medical problems, so we couldn't afford anything. So I have a lot of
resentment towards the education system.

It became a game, where I would figure out how much I could slack off and
still get an A in a class. Senior year in HS, I didn't show up for an entire
month, and there were no repercussions.

Our whole education system is pathetic. Access to the internet has humbled me
quite a lot, but I see a lot of young people with the same problems that I
had.

Hmm, I guess I'm still pretty ticked off.

~~~
jacoblyles
Incentives matter. Whether a school district educates well or poorly, it will
still get its annual budget increase from the state assembly.

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lzimm
Whenever I see this kinda stuff, I start thinking about a link that I believe
got posted here a while back about education in Finland. I don't remember
where it was, so I can't share it as part of this discussion, but what really
stuck out to me about the whole thing is summarized by asking:

Do students get a better education by being surrounded by genius peers and
mentors? Or is it better to forget about the distraction that competition for
seating creates (ie: limited University seats, and other various competitive
factors that we have between students in North America, starting a very early
level), and instead, relax that whole thing so that students can REALLY learn
by teaching their less advanced peers, thereby allowing teachers to leverage
the smarter kids in the room to normalize the average at a much higher level,
which is exactly what happens in Finland.

The other part of the equation, of course, stems from the fact that classes in
Finland are capable of swallowing harder material because the peer-tutoring
thing creates a much higher base level competence, which, in turn, can
understand more challenging material. That whole thing disappears when your
base level competence has an IQ north of 140 to start with.

(forgive grammarz plz, head spinning, can't be bothered to proof read)

~~~
catzaa
> (ie: limited University seats, and other various competitive factors that we
> have between students in North America, starting a very early level),

The USA has a much better university system than Finland (or any country in
Europe). So they must do something right.

> smarter kids in the room to normalize the average at a much higher level,
> which is exactly what happens in Finland.

The USA does a lot better than most countries with mathematics achievement.
See here: <http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_1.asp#f2>

Notably excellent results are Russia. Unfortunately Finland isn't on that list
- but I doubt that the performance will be better.

I personally don't think that having peer tutoring will help - it will only
hold back the competent and hard working. Peer tutoring sounds (IMHO) too much
like some Outcomes Based Education ideal/pipedream.

~~~
lzimm
Different stats tell different stories, your results clearly surfaced a
different conclusion than what my quick google turned up when I was trying to
find the original article I was looking for:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland>

"In the OECD's international assessment of student performance, PISA, Finland
has consistently been among the highest scorers worldwide; in 2006 Finnish
15-year-olds came first in science and second in mathematics and reading
literacy, in 2003 Finnish came first in reading literacy, mathematics, and
science, while placing second in problem solving. In tertiary education, the
World Economic Forum ranks Finland #1 in the world in enrollment and quality
and #2 in maths and science education."

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/education/4073753.stm>

BEST MEAN SCORES: MATHS Hong Kong-China: 550 Finland: 544 South Korea: 542
Netherlands: 538 Liechtenstein: 536 Source: OECD PISA 2003 data

BEST MEAN SCORES: READING Finland: 543 South Korea: 534 Canada: 528 Australia:
525 Liechtenstein: 525

BEST MEAN SCORES: SCIENCE Finland: 548 Japan: 548 Hong Kong-China: 539 South
Korea: 538 Liechtenstein: 525 Australia: 525 Macao-China: 525

~~~
wtallis
Their averages are nice, but they say nothing about how their system works for
the students who can perform above average in their sleep. Unless you've got
evidence to the contrary, I assume that the Finnish method isn't magically
successful, and it looks good on paper at the expense of not enabling the best
and brightest to reach their full potential. Given what the Wikipedia article
says about the obstacles to establishing alternative schools, I'd say that
being a highly gifted student in Finland is likely to be quite frustrating.

~~~
jibiki
> I assume that the Finnish method isn't magically successful, and it looks
> good on paper at the expense of not enabling the best and brightest to reach
> their full potential.

Here's some supporting evidence. Let's compare it to a country of similar
size, Singapore:

[http://www.imo-
official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=F...](http://www.imo-
official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=FIN&column=year&order=desc)

[http://www.imo-
official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=S...](http://www.imo-
official.org/country_individual_r.aspx?code=SGP)

We can see that Singapore does much better.

Of course, IMO scores are not exactly the most important measure ever, but I
suspect, nonetheless, that smart Finnish students spend more time playing
computer games than their counterparts in Singapore.

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hristov
I have a brilliant business plan. Parents give me 30k per year per child and
in exchange I will say that their kids are gifted.

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Dilpil
Did anyone else notice "About 1 in 5 (3,231) scored in the 90th percentile or
higher, qualifying them for neighborhood-based gifted programs, and 9 percent
(1,345) made the 97th percentile"?

~~~
wtallis
So? There's a selection bias in who attempts to qualify for gifted programs,
and the quoted percentiles are relative to the general population. These kinds
of tests aren't re-normed with every administration. The magnitude of this
selection bias doesn't seem at all surprising.

