
Separating gifted children hasn't led to better achievement - 2arrs2ells
https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-separating-gifted-children-hasnt-led-to-better-acheivement/
======
hackerrenews
I was fourth picked for g&t. First and second pick ended up being quite
successful, as did the third picked. One has a high up, prestigious position
at Amazon and the other retired from Microsoft wealthy.

Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently
since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even.

Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids. I would have
been far happier in middle school just hanging around other nice, smart
people. (With a few exceptions, the smart kids tended to be kind). The mixture
with the “gen pop” led to bullying, repeated physical abuse and harassment by
other kids from ages 10-12. This was decades ago when physical abuse amongst
minors was often ignored, even by police.

By freshman year of high school, I was worn down and switched back to some
non-honors classes mid-term. This unfortunately led to dysfunctional
friendships with the “cool” kids (same bully crowd), introduction to drugs and
a low achievement life. There was some form of Florence nightingale syndrome
involved here, due to unresolved physical abuse leading to friendships with
the abusers in high school.

Separating gifted children for accelerated learning is great. Ignoring social
development by blindly sticking all kids together in unstructured environments
where bullying and physical abuse is allowed to persist will override any hope
for some kids. I know, I was there. Still here.

~~~
borski
Amen to this. I was separated (went to Stuyvesant HS in NYC) and it made a
_world_ of difference for me, as compared to JHS or elementary school. Prior
to Stuy, I was bullied like crazy, beaten, and it was _very_ difficult to try
and fit in with many of the others around me who, frankly, _just didn 't give
a fuck_. It really sucked.

Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the
opportunity to actually just learn, and not have to hide my report card or
test scores as soon as I got them, because doing "too well" meant a beatdown
after school.

2/3 of my MIT admission essays were about this experience, incidentally.

[edit 1] Aside: one additional anecdote is that I was constantly getting in
trouble before Stuy; I was always bored, because the work was easy, and nobody
ever gave me additional work to do, so I would talk to the other kids. I was
always an extrovert, and very bad at being bored; I could not sit in one place
and just stare at the wall, or pretend to listen to a teacher drone on about
some geometry thing I already knew. So I got in trouble _constantly_ for
distracting the other kids. That stopped in Stuy, because I wasn't bored; I
was challenged.

[edit 2] The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of
JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just
taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last
day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and
punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least
proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could
make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to
actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to
fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in
martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn't want to get in trouble.
It was dumb.

~~~
koolba
The solution is not to pull out a handful of high performers, it’s to kick out
the even smaller number of disrupters.

~~~
solveit
Yes, but how would that work in practice? Special schools for high performers
is much more palatable than special schools for quarantining children who
aren't going to amount to anything (no matter what you call it and how you
design it, this is how it will be perceived).

~~~
empthought
If mandatory school attendance were repealed, it would work itself quite
quickly.

~~~
ip26
All well and good, but those people still get to vote.

~~~
empthought
There is no difference between voters who attended school only because they
were forced to, and hypothetical voters who weren’t forced to attend school.

~~~
tsukikage
We don’t trust kids with the choice to smoke, drink or have sex. Hell, we
don’t trust them to watch certain films. Why should we trust them with the
choice of education any more than other choices that can screw up the rest of
their life?

~~~
empthought
Who's trusting kids with anything? Do they not have parents?

The point is that students who are not engaged themselves, and whose parents
are not engaged enough to ensure that they go, will no longer make school less
valuable for all by their very presence.

------
dguido
Here's the opposite perspective: [https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/bs-
xpm-2012-02-06-bs-ed...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/bs-
xpm-2012-02-06-bs-ed-gifted-education-20120206-story.html)

> But as the facts now show, smart kids don't always stay smart, and when they
> are bored or bullied or ridiculed or neglected, some turn off and some drop
> out. Thirty-plus years of experience and research into how these students
> learn has taught us that the academically able can and must be challenged
> and engaged, inspired and encouraged in order to cultivate their creativity,
> spirit of innovation, and passion for learning.

Here's IMHO a better perspective on how to "close the excellence gap" in NYC
schools, in particular, by changing the way talent is identified and by using
local norms. [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-11-what-can-
we...](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-11-what-can-we-learn-
from-new-york-city-selective/id1435807749?i=1000441117501)

Finally, here's a twist: Eliminating gifted programs disproportionally hurts
poor parents since rich parents will just pay for any available opportunity to
get their kid ahead.

~~~
cortesoft
Right, so it raises the question: What is the relative importance of helping
the best students verse helping the worst students?

Even if we solve the talent identification problem, SOME kids are going to be
the lower achievers.... are we willing to sacrifice helping them do better to
help the top achievers do their best? How much are we willing to sacrifice in
either direction?

~~~
toasterlovin
> are we willing to sacrifice helping them do better to help the top achievers
> do their best

It's not clear to me that separating more talented kids into their own groups
and classes hurts less talented kids. What is your thinking here?

~~~
cortesoft
Isn't that the entire conclusion of the article? That separating kids out
hurts the average, meaning more kids are worse off than better?

------
mancerayder
_This difference between tracked and untracked math experiences was
illuminated recently in a survey we gave to San Francisco ninth-graders and
ninth-graders across another large district, where all students are in tracked
groups. The San Francisco students were significantly more positive about both
mathematics and their own potential. Importantly, the San Francisco students
were also significantly more likely than students in tracked groups to say
that they enjoyed solving complex math problems, and that work was at the
right level for them — neither too easy nor too hard._

So is the topic achievement, or is the topic their feelings?

In a Postmodern twist of language, we've rhetorically connected a statistic
around feelings and a statistic around achievement, but those are two separate
items.

They eliminated advanced math classes until 10th great? I'm EXTREMELY happy
I'm old now, because when I was a kid ANY class I took with the average or the
below average, I was bullied.

Some people are better thinkers, some people are better as leaders, fighters
or lifters of boxes. I'm sorry, Postmodernists, we're not equal and never will
be.

In NYC they're wanting to remove the gifted and talented classes not because
they don't work, but because of racial disparities. The idea here is that we
should all fail together, since equality is most easily achieved by trimming
the top.

~~~
itsdrewmiller
Earlier in the article it addressed some achievement metrics for the same
district:

>For instance, after San Francisco Unified de-tracked math, the proportion of
students failing algebra fell from 40 percent to 8 percent and the proportion
of students taking advanced classes rose to a third, the highest percentage in
district history. Until 10th grade, students take the same mathematics
classes. From 11th grade on, students can choose different pathways.

The author is indeed trying to connect feelings about ability and achievement.
I'm not sure how this is postmodern.

~~~
marcusverus
He is referring to cultural postmodernism, which is a worldview in which
objective truth is not to be preferred to the perceived / experienced
understanding (i.e. opinion) as to the truth. Especially when considering the
socially or economically disadvantaged.

So while an adherent to a purely rational worldview might ask, "what the hell
do feelings have to do with measuring academic performance?", a postmodernist
would be glad to, say, include data about feelings (i.e. opinions) in an
article and try to pass them off as evidence alongside hard, objective data,
as though someone's feelings about grades and the grades themselves are both
legitimate data from which to make decisions or design policy.

~~~
jariel
Very true, but 'feelings' and 'attitudes' do matter.

Kids who 'love math and solving problems' might be considerably more likely to
apply themselves, do the work, have the confidence/grit to push a little bit
and get through it.

Frankly 'attitude' is one of the bigger determinants in so many things.

So if we can somehow get kids to 'love math' my gosh this is a materially good
outcome.

~~~
marcusverus
We agree entirely. Feelings matter for motivation and can underpin
performance. But the rational view is that, at the end of the day, you must
have an objective measure of performance, devoid of opinion and emotion. The
kids' feelings matter when motivating them to perform, but when it comes time
to evaluate said performance, feelings cannot matter one wit. If they do, you
are no longer measuring performance, you're measuring something else.

------
xhkkffbf
I have to say that this result is wildly different from my experience and that
of my children. It's boring to sit in class redoing a simple math problem just
because someone wants to detrack math.

A friend of mine who is a teacher says that he has MORE discipline problems
from the smart kids who aren't challenged enough.

The real secret should be to embrace independent, computer-mediated systems
like Khan Academy. Everyone can move at their own pace. That's the best choice
going forward. We have the technology. We have the ability to liberate our
children to learn at their individual pace. I don't know why we cling to the
old sage-on-a-stage model.

~~~
empath75
I think they’d do better by taking the kids who understand the material and
asking them to work with the kids who don’t. You learn as much by teaching as
doing, if not more.

~~~
wott
It is very difficult to explain something which was obvious to you. Often you
would not know how to decompose it, and above all, you would not know the pain
points the others encounter, and why those points are painful. Teaching is a
trade, after all.

~~~
bradlys
> It is very difficult to explain something which was obvious to you.

I think that's the point. Teaching the kids who are performing well on
something on how to distill their knowledge to others.

------
underpand
The SF algebra change is NOT a success. Most of the stats are cherrypicked and
misleading.

> For instance, after San Francisco Unified de-tracked math, the proportion of
> students failing algebra fell from 40 percent to 8 percent and the
> proportion of students taking advanced classes rose to a third, the highest
> percentage in district history.

This compares the number of _8th graders_ who failed Algebra 1 before the
change to the number of _9th graders_ who failed Algebra 1 after the change.
These are apples to oranges numbers. The appropriate metric is the percent of
9th graders that have passed Algebra 1 in either 8th or 9th grade before and
after the change.

The following is arguably the most important metric that is omitted. From
another article:

> While more students are taking precalculus now, the enrollment in Advanced
> Placement calculus courses has _declined by nearly 13 percent_ over the past
> two years.

------
ryandrake
When I was in middle school in the 90s, I think around 7th grade (~12yo), the
school district experimented with a new way of organizing the student body
where they separated us into six distinct, equally sized cohorts based on some
evaluation of each student's performance and capability. From what I could
tell it was rougly:

1\. Gifted / clearly university-bound

2\. Potential college prep

3\. Community college

4\. Normal underperformers

5\. Little hope, likely will drop out

6\. No future besides unemployment or prison

You took all your classes with your own cohort, rarely had to interact with
anyone outside your cohort, and coursework was tailored to your level. It was
glorious. I went from boring, slow classes and having to run and hide from
tormentors to appropriately paced coursework and always interacting with
friendly, nice, smart kids. My childhood mental health went on a noticeable
upswing during this experiment. Too bad it ended around 3 years later and I
was thrown back into the prison "general population" full of kids whose
talents included arson and filing other kids' teeth down in the metal shop.
Not sure why they ended the program, because it really made school bearable.

~~~
bigger_cheese
My high school in Australia (years 7-12) was structured similarly, there was a
gifted program for the high performing students.

I don't think there were other tracks, it was pretty much just high achievers
classes and than the regular pool of students.

I can remember vividly my parents wanted to send me to private (Catholic) high
school after Primary school. I begged not to be separated from my existing
friends who were all going to the local public school (which didn't have a
great rep). It was only the presence of these gifted classes which convinced
my parents to let me go to the public school. Both of my younger sisters were
subsequently sent to Catholic School.

My parents pretty much followed the 'tiger parent' stereotype they put
enormous pressure on me to succeed I remember I got 93% on a math test once
and my Dad yelling at me and berating me for not doing well enough.

My friends thought my parents were insane, especially when I'd tell them I
couldn't go to the movies because my parents were making me study for an
upcoming test and things like that. None of my friend's parents seemed to give
a shit about their grades.

I'm grateful for opportunities I had as a result of my upbringing, I got into
the course I wanted at a good university etc. But looking back now decades
later it feels like I was robbed of an adolescence. A lot of people have fond
memories of their time in high school all that really stands out to me was
enormous amount of pressure I felt, I'm honestly surprised I didn't have some
sort of breakdown.

I can remember one of my good friends, who I'd be constantly competing with
for top marks seemed to breeze through class with about 1/10th of the effort I
put in he'd never study for any tests, he'd be writing up his homework 10
minutes before it was due and getting full marks. I always felt like such a
fraud compared to him. I got good grades because my parents leaned so hard on
me to put in the work, even at the time I was conscious of that. He got good
grades because he was naturally gifted and school came 'easily' to him. Today
he has two PHD and is still one of the most intelligent people I know.

~~~
Mirioron
> _I always felt like such a fraud compared to him. I got good grades because
> my parents leaned so hard on me to put in the work, even at the time I was
> conscious of that. He got good grades because he was naturally gifted and
> school came 'easily' to him._

I wonder if he might not have felt the same way because he put in so much less
effort, but still did well. If you put in a lot of effort regardless of the
outcome you can think back that you tried your best. If you half-ass it and
things go well, then you might feel that you don't deserve it, but if things
don't go well, then you feel bad for not trying.

Being able to work hard is a talent itself. In many cases it's the most
important one.

~~~
waterhouse
And never being confronted with tasks that _require_ hard work, during one's
formative years, is a curse.

------
nine_k
I'd just hazard to say that the current school system is not very functional.

It puts kids through a lot of unpleasant experiences, requiring to exert a lot
of effort and spend a lot of time. The problem is that not so much of that
effort, discomfort, and time is due to learning new and useful stuff.

Instead, some kids waste time bored when they are ahead of the class, some
waste time clueless when they are way behind the class. Quite some kids spend
effort on fending off bullies, while other kids attain toxic experience of
being successful bullies.

Most of the kids also have a very vague idea _why_ are they studying
particular stuff, hoping that maybe it will all fall in place when they go to
college, or just hope to pass through it all and forget it after graduating.

Teaching children is what we, as a society, haven't yet figured out well
enough.

~~~
cortesoft
I always feel like my most valuable lessons from school was about how to live
and interact with people of different types. I learned academic stuff outside
of school... it was learning to deal with dumb people, bullies, smart jerks,
dumb teachers, stupid rules, etc that were the lessons most important to my
life.

~~~
underpand
It depends on your support system when you're a kid/teen. Facing stress and
challenges when you're unable to handle them can cause irreversible trauma.
Some people would be better off learning to face them when they are adults.

~~~
shantly
I had a relatively easy high school experience compared to many—almost no
physical bullying, very little bullying otherwise, ran with a couple friend
groups outside my almost-the-nerdiest-bunch-but-not-quite primary group that
had a kind of light-alternative "cool" factor, school was decent and
supportive by local standards at least, happened to pick up weight lifting in
junior high and stuck with it so got pretty damn cut rather than continuing
down the path of lard—but it was _still_ easily the hardest four years of my
life so far (now entering middle age, have multiple kids, a job, all that
adult stuff).

College was like a vacation afterward. People mostly don't do a bunch of
stupid, mean, disruptive bullshit, and if they do you're not expected to just
put up with it? 15ish hours in class and you can arrange your schedule for a
mix of hard and easy classes to come out way under the ~45-50hrs/wk of in-
class and homework/study time of high school, _plus_ you can usually figure a
way not to have to get up before the fucking sun at least 2-3 days of the
week, if not all of them? If you need to whizz you just... go? If you are sick
or just need a mental health day you just send an email or three and rest, and
it may mean a little more work later but no-one busts your balls over it as
long as you don't do it too much? What is this, paradise?

It was shocking how much less stressful it was. It truly kinda messed me up
for a while, just not understanding how to function outside the pressure-
cooker of high school. The socialization there had almost nothing to do with
how adults relate to one another in the real world, and the constantly high
social stress levels, tight and absolute control by adults, and inability to
make any reasonable or ordinary effort to get out of that plainly-very-bad
situation, were insane compared to most of the "adult" world.

No wonder so many teens are depressed. School is _really_ awful. Like,
structurally so. In the best case. The first few months with a newborn, but
after you've gone back to work so are trying to do both things, _approach_ but
are not _quite_ as stressful, overall, as high school, in the typical case.
I'm not kidding.

~~~
cortesoft
Man, your highschool experience sounds totally different than mine. Highschool
wasn't always great, but it was mostly ok and I had a lot of good times. I
wasn't popular, but had good friends.

I am also a middle aged guy with a couple of kids, and I think raising
children is way more stressful than highschool ever was.

~~~
shantly
There's more _worry_ with kids, in my experience, by a long shot. More
responsibility. Less crushing grind (though lots, to be clear). And it's
better motivated than high school, that having a disorienting and
disheartening mix of deadly seriousness (so you're meant to believe, anyway)
and complete make-believe with the lines always shifting and blurring. That
helps make the trade-offs of having kids far less oppressive than high school,
I think.

------
vanniv
This (opinion) article seems to be making the claim that separating out all of
the top kids makes the group not selected perform worse.

(The measurement of "achievement" used is percentage of students failing a
rudimentary algebra class and percentage of students enrolling in an advanced
mathematics class)

This seems uncontroversial -- the smart kids will benefit the rest by their
presence, and being labelled as not-smart probably doesn't help achievement
very much.

But the purpose of separating out the really gifted kids was never for the
benefit of the folks that couldn't cut it -- it was for the benefit of the
gifted kids so that they could actually achieve at the level of their ability.

It seems to me quite uncontroversial that removing all of the disruptive kids
and eliminating all of the remedial study time would aid students that are
both interested and able to achieve.

------
harry8
Bogus headline.

"Separating gifted from non-gifted children hasn't led to better overall
achievement of both groups combined."

It says nothing about whether the streamed gifted children do better than if
they are not streamed it says much about those not deemed gifted doing worse.

(Just quietly, I'd suspect that given the choice of having your child streamed
as gifted or not the best thing to do is to put them with the best teacher(s)
- who will handle whatever psychological downsides there are of whatever that
is).

------
sershe
I actually wonder what's up with bullying in US schools.

I grew up in Moscow, Russia in the 90ies (many people were not well off to say
the least) and I was both super nerdy and extremely eh, daring (I would talk
back to other kids who were much stronger/more popular than me all the time
etc.). Sure, I was not popular, yet I was bullied lightly and almost never
physically, mostly by a couple classmates who were just kinda generally messed
up (interestingly enough both of them are software developers now, as far as I
know), and in total perhaps for 2-3 years in late middle school (I think). The
bullying just kinda never happened; I never thought much of that until I read
stories like the ones here.

Sure, I hear it was worse outside of Moscow, but even in Moscow an average
student's family in the 90ies was way poorer than say in Ohio. Outside of
Moscow it's not even comparable. And yet, the level of bullying was probably
still lower than what it seems to be in any average American school.

What's up with that?

~~~
txru
In Russia, do you stay together with your class all throughout high school?
That is, did you share a core set of classes with a set of about 25 people for
four years, with only certain elective classes where you would be split up
(like music or art)?

If you do, I think that's the difference. Here in America, depending on the
size of the school, every year there is no core group you share most classes
with. You sign up for classes, and sometimes friends choose to stay together,
but otherwise most classes come with a set of people that is likely to be
selected from the whole grade. There are academic tracks for high/medium/low
achievement in Math, English, Science, etc., but even in medium-sized schools
you could have a class with a significant percentage of the students in the
school every year. Some schools are quite large.

I went to high school in both Croatia and America, Croatia having fixed
classes where students stayed with their cohort year after year, and I was
surprised how different the social environment felt. Even for the more
socially awkward people, people weren't really rejected or bullied-- because
you would have to see that person for the next N years of your life. Whereas
in America, "fuck that guy, I only had a health class with him once, his voice
is annoying."

~~~
spc476
I think it depends upon the school system in the United States [1]. I was with
the same group of friends starting with the 5th grade (9-10 years old) through
12th grade (18 years old, last grade before college). It just so happened that
not only did all my friends live in the same school district [2] but also in
the same school boundary [3]. And the high school I attended was quite large
(nearly 2,000 students; 450 in my graduating class alone).

[1] Most school systems in the United States are vary by county to county.
There's some oversight at the state and federal levels, but the higher up the
government, the less oversight, generally speaking.

[2] I think it was the 3rd largest in the country. Large enough to be split
administratively into three sub-districts.

[3] I was supposed to attend a different high school from my friends because
of where I lived at the time, but the boundaries for high school shifted and I
ended up attending the same high school as the rest of my friends. Strange now
that I think about it, because of the three high schools in the area, it was
the furthest one.

------
jacobsenscott
Getting classified as G&T is a joke and severely damaging. All it means is
your parents taught you to read a little earlier than most other kids. It's
mostly about giving your parents and school administrators bragging rights.
Everyone calls you a genius for the next 10 or 12 years. You incorporates that
as the most important part of your identity. Then people level out. You aren't
the best at everything anymore. Some classes actually get hard. You graduate
in the top 10%, but not the top 1%. Your core identity shatters. You are
smart, but there are lots of smart people and you really aren't that special.
Suddenly you are emotionally 10 years behind the people how figured that out
in middle school. Hopefully you can pull out of the spiral and live a normal
life.

~~~
scintill76
Agreed. This thread showed me a new level. Top comment: "I was fourth picked
for g&t. First and second pick ended up being quite successful, as did the
third picked." I don't know if it's normal to know everyone's ranking (one
other commenter knew their own rank), but it doesn't sound healthy. Feels like
it would compound the problems you mentioned -- not only were you G&T, you
were 2nd-best of the G&T... until one day you're barely average, let alone in
the top 2.

------
gojomo
It's hard to find this sort of op-ed convincing when it includes hard-to-
interpret imprecise word-salad like:

> Eight Bay Area school districts found similar results when they de-tracked
> middle-school mathematics and provided professional development to teachers.
> In 2014, 63 percent of students were in advanced classes, whereas in 2015
> only 12 percent were in advanced classes and everyone else was taking Math
> 8. The overall achievement of the students significantly increased after de-
> tracking. The cohort of students in eighth-grade mathematics in 2015 were 15
> months ahead of the previous cohort of students who were mainly in advanced
> classes.

Huh? What's "Math 8"? How was "overall achievement" measured?

How could decreasing the proportion of students in "advanced classes" from 63%
to 12% result in a "cohort of students" that is "15 months ahead" of the
students who were in "advanced classes"? (What definitions of "advanced" could
possibly mean 15 months behind "non-advanced" coursework?)

If there's a strong case, and the writer understands it, it would be explained
better than this – and probably include tables & graphs, rather than just
rambling assertions like the above paragraph.

------
panda88888
Comparing the approach to high school sports and academics really reveals how
intellectual ability is not treated as a talent to be developed, at least in
the US. In high school, there are junior varsity, varsity, and sometimes
amateur level sport teams officially organized and recognized by school. They
have formal tryouts, limited in the number of people accepted, resources
dedicated to develop the talents, and school-wide recognition by other
students. Rather than a gifted and talented program for students, perhaps
there should be "varsity" level teams (i.e. classes) for subjects such as
math, science, and literature, etc. There would be tryouts. And once a student
is accepted into the program, official support for coaching, practice,
development, competition, and official recognition with a varsity jacket,
similar to that of sports.

------
cortesoft
How do we help those kids that are in 'gen pop', though? Simply pulling the
smarter kids out, helping them, and ignoring the rest doesn't seem like a good
answer, either.

I feel like HN is not the best place for this sort of discussion, since
everyone is coming at the problem from the perspective of the high achiever.
The low achievers deserve help, too.

~~~
borski
I agree with this 100%, but the issues are not intertwined. We need to fix how
classes are _taught_ in "low achieving schools," but that's really hard to do
when teachers are paid so poorly. Teaching isn't a lucrative career, and thus
those that would be great teachers don't generally go into it. It's a really
complex and difficult problem that I don't know I have a solution for. I do
know that getting rid of magnet schools isn't it, though.

~~~
barry-cotter
> on average, public-school teachers receive total compensation that is
> roughly 50 percent higher than what they would receive in private-sector
> employment. While salaries are at appropriate levels, fringe benefits push
> teacher compensation far ahead of what private-sector workers enjoy.
> Consequently, recruiting more effective teachers for public schools will be
> much more difficult than simply raising salaries.

[https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-
as...](https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-assessing-
teacher-compensation)

~~~
nitrogen
As someone raised by two teachers I can say that my parents both had to work
two to four different jobs at times just to struggle to keep up. Whatever that
statistic is claiming, it doesn't reflect reality in at least some cases.

~~~
cortesoft
Interesting... both my parents were teachers, and we lived comfortably enough
(not rich, but never felt deprived)

~~~
sokoloff
Same here, but I recall my parents doing side hustles working nights at the
drive-in, on summer breaks filling gardens for cash, cutting firewood, doing
renovation projects on rental properties we would buy to fix and rent, running
a snow plow truck 12-16 hours during storms (teachers get snow days in MD, so
snow plow is a near-perfect side hustle), etc.

------
dragonwriter
> The other reason that students do well in mixed groups is that teachers know
> they need to “differentiate” work, providing opportunities for students to
> take work to different levels.

This isn't a reason students do well in non-differentiated groups, but a
confounding factor to the basic question of whether or not they do (one
directly underlined in the case of the unspecified other bay area district
studied where detracking and teacher professional development were
simultaneous interventions.)

It's well-known that students do better when material is tailored to their
individual ability, so if you are comparing students grouped in broad ability
groups _without_ this individualization and those detracked from broad groups
but provided individualization, you lose the ability to distinguish between
effects of broad group tracking and the qualitatively well-known effect of
individualization.

------
vintermann
Lots of people sharing stories about how fortunate they were to be saved from
bullying and chaos.

I can relate, since I switched schools myself to get away from bullying
(though to a Waldorf school rather than any kind of gifted program). But have
you stopped to think, if this study is correct, then some of the following
seems like they must be true:

* you would actually have done as well if you stayed

* you would have done worse if you stayed, but others who went into gifted programs would have done better if they didn't, making up for it

* people like you are just too rare to make a difference in the statistics.

My older brother wasn't actively bullied, but was in an infamously
dysfunctional class. He just filtered them out somehow, never changed school,
and did far better than me academically in the end. So maybe an anecdotal data
point for the first option.

There are other things besides achievement. I can certainly see an argument
for separating kids who actively hurt other kids, whether it matters for
achievement or not. But it seems giving high scoring kids extra stimulating
environments isn't all it's cracked up to be (If the study can be believed).

------
notus
When I was in elementary school we had this program called GATE and basically
it was like once a month you go to a different school with other GATE students
from the other schools in the district. There would be special classes like
oceanography, robotics, etc. I don't think it added any value into my life
ever except variety of experience. I also think it made other students who
weren't in it feel kind of bad because they didn't get to go do anything. They
should have just done it for everyone IMO.

~~~
mjevans
I agree this likely would have been better for the rest of the students if
they too had individualized targeted classes to experience.

That'd be a great time for those with strong prospects in sports to receive
individualized education with outside coaches/players from those fields.

It'd also be a great time for students at risk academically to secretly have
tutoring and targeted coverage of core subjects they might be struggling with.

However I'm much more hopeful for actually personalized education; like
turning school in to more of an MMO-RPG class system where assignments are
like the quests in a game and participation on larger projects has real world
commons / civic infrastructure improvements. Real mentor-ship and problems in
the real world would give practical application to education that I feel would
make retention much stronger.

------
Glyptodon
The article seems to suggest that issues are less the separation than the
messaging and expectations created with it. Personally, I think the goal
should be to always encourage and challenge all students, and show all
students that working diligently and thoughtfully can pay off.

I know from experience that being in a classroom that functions at the level
of the lowest common denominator is basically abusive to everyone else. What
would you feel like if you had to spend high school English class reading Dick
and Jane out loud, for example? That's what a poor combined class is like for
"G&T" students (and I had a couple real rough years when things felt like
that). But that's also a far from saying "GATE kids" should always be
"tracked" or feel like they're stuck in a particular lane and loaded down with
ridiculous expectations.

------
kendallpark
There a lot more options than tracked vs non-tracked.

My public school district implemented a combination of pull-out programs,
advanced sections, and tracking on a per-subject and sometimes per-previous
year's performance basis. A lot of effort was made to keep class cohorts
together, while allowing students who excel at a specific subject to engage in
a more challenging curriculum for that particular subject. These were all
based on independent assessments. There wasn't a notion of "track" because
most students were in a hodgepodge of "advanced/ahead" and "regular" courses,
depending on the subject, depending on the previous year's performance, or
depending on whether they themselves decided to sign up for the class or not.

A high school kid could:

\- be a year ahead in English (which would only separate them from classmates
for freshman and sophomore year; English curriculum was completely open, like
college, after sophomore-level English.)

\- be in one of three math cohorts

\- be in the honors or regular section of a science course (based on the
previous year's science performance). It was always the same science subject
(eg, honors bio vs bio).

\- take any AP course they met the prereqs for (iirc, pretty much all APs were
available to all students within four years, save AP Calc, which would require
a summer school catch up for those in the baseline math track).

\- have been in the gifted pull-out program in elementary school (no special
curriculum for "gifted" students in high school, afaik)

------
dre54673
I was in gifted classes for a couple of years from like 5th-6th grade but was
eventually separated. I had perfect standardized test scores, but my grades
were average due to many reasons. Some of my teachers didn't like me, and I
guess they decided to kick me out. Later I ended up dropping out in high
school but still went to college later and now work at one of the big tech
companies. So in the end I ended up alright but others may not be as lucky.

I'm not going to lie, being separated from the "smart" kids felt bad. I knew I
was just as capable, but someone had the power to decide who is gifted and I
guess they didn't like me. I was placed in classes where the teachers were of
lower quality and the material was even less interesting. One of the teachers
who didn't like me while I was with the gifted kids was my science teacher and
that made me dislike science as a whole. I had a couple of math teachers who
were extremely supportive throughout my early education and that made a world
of difference. I decided to study CS in large part because I could avoid a lot
of science courses and focus on math.

I also have a sister who was indirectly affected by me being in gifted
programs. She later admitted to me it made her feel really bad that I was
placed in those programs while she wasn't. I think this really hurt her self
esteem and had a negative impact in her education. I could imagine other kids
feeling similarly when some of their peers get labeled as gifted while they
don't.

Looking back, the biggest benefit of being in gifted programs was simply that
the teachers were better. So the kids who didn't necessarily need better
teachers got the best ones, while the rest got packets to read through. The
kids also weren't that different. The main difference was how much the parents
of the gifted kids were involved in their education and they were generally
wealthier. Overall it seemed like an unfair system that told kids who were
just starting out whether they were smart or not. I think we really need
better and more teachers, but they aren't paid enough. School is more of a
place to put children while parents work than it is a place to educate.

------
jedberg
When I was in High School, we didn't have "advanced math" per se. You just
went in to the next math. If you were advanced, you did Geometry as a
freshman, and if you were remedial you did Geometry as a senior, but we were
all mixed into the same class.

I ended up making friends with a senior (as a freshman) because I'd help her
with the problem sets after I quickly finished them. This not only helped her,
but it helped me master the material better because I had to know it well
enough to teach it. The teacher encouraged this by allowing all of us time to
work together in class, so this happened with a bunch of small groups.

------
StanislavPetrov
The problem with this article is that the author keeps talking about aggregate
"achievement". Is it better to slightly improve the aggregate number of
children who can limp across the arbitrary "achievement" thresholds supposedly
measured by ever-changing tests, or make sure that the resources exist for
every child to exist in an environment that allows them to learn at their own
speed? Classrooms forced to teach at a pace that accommodates the slowest
learners necessarily hold back the education and growth of every student
capable and eager to learn at a higher rate (as well as inducing boredom and
apathy). I'd argue that we should be increasing resources to the slowest
students who have the hardest problem closing the achievement gap rather than
trying to eliminate that gap by pretending that all students learn at the same
rate and holding back our best and brightest.

------
bradlys
I find it interesting that a lot of people here are referencing how they wish
they could have been separated very early on. That the "smart" children were
nicer and the rest were just bullies. I'll hedge that some of that is true.
Sure - at my schools - some of the worst performers and bullies were in lower
tracks. The worst moved or never went to the normal high school though. They
ended up failing so hard and/or getting too many out of school suspensions.
However - gotta say - plenty of assholes at the top marks. I can't remember
any high(er) performers being very nice. Most were jerks outright. Bullying
then was usually more psychological than physical but it wasn't foregone to
see physical issues.

I was quickly shot in and out midyear due to my rather unpredictable
performance (go figure - regular bullying, alcoholic parents, harsh punitive
measures, and high neglect never fared me well). I never noticed the bullying
change beyond the superficial. (Physical vs psychological - but, even then,
that wasn't off limits really much either)

If the goal is to increase test scores - maybe fix the core issues that get in
the way of students learning the material. But - I get it, that's basically
impossible. Shit parents are ubiquitous. They seem almost universal.

------
gnicholas
> _after San Francisco Unified de-tracked math, the proportion of students
> failing algebra fell from 40 percent to 8 percent and the proportion of
> students taking advanced classes rose to a third, the highest percentage in
> district history. Until 10th grade, students take the same mathematics
> classes. From 11th grade on, students can choose different pathways._

That doesn't seem like much time to choose different math pathways. For
example, the "math kids" I grew up with took several classes post-calculus in
high school. How can you do that if you're only taking calculus as a junior or
possibly senior (depending on what the common coursework was up through
sophomore year)?

~~~
akhilcacharya
> . For example, the "math kids" I grew up with took several classes post-
> calculus in high school. How can you do that if you're only taking calculus
> as a junior or possibly senior

What if taking more than Calculus 2 in High school isn’t necessary?

Your school seems incredibly privileged to me, imho.

~~~
gnicholas
Surely it isn't "necessary" to take more than Calc II. But that doesn't mean
that it wouldn't be good for some students to go further than that. The point
is that in the setup described, no kids can take very advanced classes.

As far as privilege is concerned, it was a public IB school in Sacramento, and
we had kids from all types of backgrounds. The average income (even in the IB
program) was definitely lower than in other area high schools.

------
pacaro
In the final two years of secondary education — UK Sixth Form (college),
roughly equivalent to US Junior and Senior years — I was in a selected math(s)
class of just 12 students. Certainly the group of kids in the class all
excelled academically at that point, and of that dozen many have gone on to be
very successful (by a variety of metrics)

One point from TFA jumped out at me

— others shared that they’d learned they shouldn’t ask questions, as “gifted
people are meant to know everything.”

I remember being astonished at this attitude at the time, that when the
hardest problem sets were being worked through, consistently there was this
sense that students were afraid to ask questions or make suggestions for fear
of being wrong. The class kept moving because of a combination of no-nonsense
teachers and a couple of students with a habit of blurting out the first thing
that came to their head. Those students weren't often correct (I was
occasionally one of them) but they definitely kept the class from stalling

------
yters
I'm in favor of single gender schools. I went to both coed and boys only
grammar school in the UK, and the latter was much better. Bullying was much
lesd without girls around to impress. Everyone was friendlier too, even
between jock and nerd cliches. It was actually cool to do well in school. For
those who wanted girlfriends, there was an all girl school they could go visit
once school let out. Much better system than all the coed schools I ever
attended in the US, UK and Maledives.

------
SpaceManNabs
This article mostly talks about the bay area (and slightly mentions national
studies), so it seems that they were mostly studying the case were most
students were already meeting a sort of baseline.

From my personal experience, I think that separating kids in lower income
areas leads to positive experiences. Before being in the gifted program, my
classes were often interrupted by fights and stuff that was more fit on world
star.

------
unexaminedlife
I want separation, but I'm not convinced separating the "cream of the crop" is
the right way to go.

What if schools were more proactive to weed out and separate the bullies from
everyone else. I think we'd end up with an overall healthier society, wherein
90% of kids will get a good education and have a good experience in school vs
trying only to ensure the top ~10% get separated from the rest.

------
Bostonian
The author is a professor at Stanford. If separating gifted children has no
benefits, why doesn't Stanford admit students at random?

~~~
mdorazio
Because IQ is only loosely correlated with actual achievement? College
admissions generally care about achievement (grades, awards, activities,
extra-curriculars, etc.), diversity, and likelihood to be a successful student
who later donates money back to the school. IQ is not a great predictor of
these outcomes since there are _a lot_ of high-IQ individuals who don't really
apply themselves.

~~~
nine_k
But it answers a wrong question.

Stanford does not admit kids by IQ score. But it _does_ have an entrance exam,
as opposed to a lottery among those who applied.

That is, they likely see some value in separating by some measure of aptitude.

~~~
chongli
The entrance exam is a fig leaf. If they admitted based on IQ scores directly
then they would be open to direct and severe attack by IQ skeptics and anti-
racists.

By using an entrance exam, they get to claim they’re admitting based on
academic achievement but in reality they know that the test is highly
correlated with IQ. All written exams are, for the most part.

------
Pmop
Wouldn't say about gifted children and achievement but even then, I'd like to
be separated just for the sake of having someone I could share one idea or
two. Spent most of my childhood lonesome and not because 'antisocial' like I
was led to believe but because the people I'd like to be hanging out with was
spread out, just like was, spending their days lone (or worse), just like I
did. I snapped out of this unlucky situation after I got into the university.
This could be achieved back then by doing just what happened now: putting me
and the other people like, together.

------
cloudwizard
I would wonder what the standards used are. There was a recent article about
how students are less prepared for University since Common Core was
implemented. Maybe the advanced class is easier that it ever was.

The biggest problem with education for gifted or even average students is that
our standards are too low. It would be like if we set a 10 minute max for the
mile run. Anybody that could run faster would still get a 10Min score. Then we
rate the school based on the average running time of the entire student body.

There is no incentive to push kids faster than 10 min. All the resources go
into the 2 kids on crutches.

------
notadoc
> OPINION: Separating ‘gifted’ children hasn’t led to better achievement

This is an opinion piece, it is not evidence based. Why was "OPINION", which
is part of the original title, removed?

------
bane
My school system was a mess when it came to their gifted and talented (GAT)
program. In my case, I was identified as a candidate, subjected to an
absolutely insane battery of cognitive, aptitude and other tests, and then
pulled from class once a week to go to another school with other GAT kids.
Once there I was put into a room and basically told to go do smart things with
no other primer, driver, or material to work with. My own personal interests
were ignored. I was told I was disappointing my sponsor teacher by my lack of
output, with no particular set of expectations on what, exactly, I was
supposed to be doing.

After a year of this I asked to be excused from the program and spent the next
year in not a "normal" class, but a remedial class because the school had
sacrificed their non-GAT classes to create academic space for the GAT kids. So
basically you were either doing some kind of advanced literature analysis or
you were being tested on how to spell such challenging words as "ball" and
"dog". There were other elements of the GAT program that were similarly
discouraging.

I couldn't get out of school fast enough and it was such a damaging experience
that I didn't go back to university until years later.

------
privateSFacct
Interesting - I went to a tracked high school. The advanced track kids were
expected to take a bunch of AP exams at the ends of their tracks. I was in
advanced but didn't always like it - there were really some gunners in these
courses blowing Calc BC out of the water. That said, there is NO WAY every kid
in high school is BC calc ready - so clearly at some point people are getting
to choose what classes to take?

------
WheelsAtLarge
The problems that smart kids encounter are the same issues that appear
generation after generation. Smart kids usually don't follow the crowd so they
stand out and are easy picking for bullies. We want and are expecting bullies
to disappear since we are better tuned into the problem of bullying. So things
will change for the better we say but that's just, not reality.

There's special education for kids with special needs; why is there no special
education for smart kids that will help them deal with social situations?
Smart kids have to deal with social land mines that will scar them if not
handled correctly. No matter how smart someone is there is no way to know what
to do in all social situations especially since most of these kids will not
have a role model to follow. Even if they are kids of parents that had to deal
with the same issues it does not mean that the parents will be able to help.

------
dak1
From the article, it sounds like the measure of 'better achievement' is
baseline scores across all students.

I was always of the opinion that separating based on ability level was not
about improving the baseline, but about allowing those able to learn greater
depth to do so.

Not every student is going to earn a Fields Medal or develop new medical
procedures, and frankly, that's ok.

But we do need some who will push the boundaries.

The only issue I have is that the selection process itself has not been
entirely merit-based, frequently showing preference for students from certain
backgrounds at the expense of gifted children of color or from less wealthy
backgrounds (and at the expense of society as a whole, who has lost out on the
benefits those children could have provided, given the opportunity).

~~~
cortesoft
So we shouldn't care about improving how the lower performing kids do, since
they aren't going to win Fields Medals or develop new medical procedures?

This is a super tricky question to answer... how much extra achievement by the
top of the class is worth how much extra achievement by the bottom of the
class? There isn't a simple answer.

~~~
bofadeez
It's not really important for someone with an IQ of 85 to attempt to study
algebra

------
kazinator
If students are inappropriate put into advanced classes, they will struggle,
and of course that will bring down the achievement of the student body.

> _Eight Bay Area school districts found similar results when they de-tracked
> middle-school mathematics and provided professional development to teachers.
> In 2014, 63 percent of students were in advanced classes, whereas in 2015
> only 12 percent were in advanced classes and everyone else was taking Math
> 8._

How did they "de-track" anything? Just the numbers were reshuffled. Advanced
classes continued, with reduced enrollment.

Could it be that though 63% were in advanced classes in 2014, only 12% (or
fewer) actually belonged there? So the 2015 picture was a rational correction?

------
faizshah
It's worth mentioning that gifted and talented schools also put all the top
test takers into a small number of schools within a system taking away AP
opportunities and other funding from other schools within the system.

Additionally, other kids in the system miss out from the interaction with top
performing students whose habits and interests can rub off and help lift up
other students. One of the most important parts of going to school is meeting
people and learning new things from them and this isn't mentioned enough in
the test score and percentile driven education age.

~~~
Kaveren
the best students should never be weighed down to benefit the lower
performers. the top percentile people in essentially any pursuit are
responsible for a disproportionately large impact. it is far more important
for the top performers to achieve their potential than for the middle to do
slightly better.

~~~
faizshah
At any school in the system the top performers would be in advanced classes
and receiving the top education at that school. We are talking about public
schools, everyone pays taxes for these schools not just the families of the
top performers. Therefore, every student should have access to the AP classes
and resources that are centralized within magnet schools.

~~~
sokoloff
Why? Why should a student who isn’t (or probably shouldn’t be) college-bound
have theoretical (or actual) access to an AP course?

I was barred from taking our Vocational-Technical courses (auto repair, auto
body, advanced shop, etc) because they weren’t offered to G&T kids. That
_also_ seems fine to me. Not every human is well suited for every endeavor.

------
mltony
I come from Russia, where the idea of gifted classes is taken to the next
level: instead of gifted classes we have entire gifted schools. If this is
true, that children who coudln't make it into gifted class are so much
demoralized by the presence of gifted children, how about we build gifted
schools here in the U.S.? This way non-gifted students won't be exposed to
gifted ones on a dayily basis. Transportation might be an issue though - in
Russia it is absolutely normal when 8 or 9-year old children take public
transportation to school on their own.

------
nitwit005
> And when we separate students into different classes, the message we send
> them is that their ability is fixed. When students, instead, embrace the
> knowledge that there are no limits to their learning, outcomes improve.

I find it difficult to believe in a sudden shift in the student worldview from
a relatively minor change. I'd tend to assume any effect was a shiff in
classroom norms.

We all tend to take behavioral hints from those around us. If you go from a
class where most people aren't paying attention, to one where most people are,
it can sway the behavior of the remainder.

------
wccrawford
In elementary school, I was in the "Gifted" program. It meant 1 day per week I
would go to the library with a teacher that taught special stuff like "logic
problems" and doing research and making slideshows. It was a _lot_ of stuff.

This is where I learned to program. This single skill was hugely impactful to
me.

But the rest of the time was probably actually more helpful, as I was forced
to do all the rest of my classwork for my regular classes and pass all my
regular tests in addition to all the work for Gifted. This kept me much, much
more engaged in education than I would have been otherwise.

Middle school had 1 class per day the same way, but it was a pale shadow of
the Elementary version.

High school had "Honors" or "AP" (Advanced Placement, IIRC) classes that
totally separated me from the kids that were just there to put in time. They
had no interest in learning and were actively against it, but I was no longer
associating with them for Literature, Science, and Math classes, and there
were no class clowns to slow everything down. We also had dual-enrollment
classes where college classes were taught at the high school for credit in
both.

Missing out on these 3 systems would absolutely have stunted my growth and I
doubt I'd be where I am today without them.

My wish isn't to separate kids, though. I wish they could _all_ enjoy learning
like I do. We haven't cracked that nut yet, though, and it seems like
separation is still necessary in order to give everyone their potential.

------
JohnBooty
Gifted education (and other advanced classes) were important because it taught
me it was okay to be smart and learn things.

A lot of other kids will try and keep you down. Make fun of you for using big
words and knowing things and learning things.

At the same time I'm glad I didn't grow up in a bubble with only gifted kids.
Coping with people different than you is an important skill.

------
Consultant32452
I was in the gifted program. So is my daughter. It's a nice break from the
monotony of regular school but it's not challenging in any way. It's not
really clear to me what the purpose of the program is, but it doesn't appear
to even try to challenge the students or introduce them to more
interesting/meaningful curriculum.

~~~
qball
>It's not really clear to me what the purpose of the program is, but it
doesn't appear to even try to challenge the students or introduce them to more
interesting/meaningful curriculum.

Its purpose is to maintain the deception that the education system is designed
to educate, rather than the daycare-disguised-as-education function it
actually serves.

Fortunately for educators and parents, even gifted kids are still easy targets
for the "we can't do anything else, so give them a token raise, a fancy title,
and stick them in a room [maybe with others like them] so everyone else can
get back to work" thing that quite a few organizations currently do. It's one
thing to accept this when you have some idea of how much you as a person are
worth; it's quite another to accept this when you're a child and have _no
idea_ that this is merely a token gesture (even though you may have your
suspicions, you'll generally lack the opportunity to do something about it
even if you're capable of acknowledging it).

And every adult that interacts with these kids _all know_ (on a subconscious
level) but will refuse to remedy this knowledge gap when they see it for
pragmatic reasons- teachers and administrators don't want their job to become
harder and/or don't have time, and parents desire obedience and subordination
from their kids and/or don't have time/money to allow limit-pushing.

You may be in a unique position to remedy this; if you are I highly recommend
you take advantage of it.

------
mattrp
The problem with advanced placement / gt / etc is that just like the broader
educational system it assumes everyone learns the same just a lot faster. In
my own experience, and I get it, this is purely anecdotal: the three smartest
people I know, and by smart I mean like off the charts genius level, all were
recognized early as being beyond what even gt was going to do for them. They
were all taken aside and basically told: you have Carte Blanche to do Whatever
you want, go to the library and learn what interests you. Now, I ask you this:
why should that gift only be afforded to kids who are so off the charts the
teachers don’t know what else to do with them? Why not focus on getting kids
the structure and discipline and desire to learn that they can go seek the
same path if they want to do it?

------
buboard
I think in a few decades people will be looking back at the obsession over
achievement and academics as something weird. People learn and achieve in
different paces, and, assuming a lifetime of continuous opportunity for
learning (as we have today), the metrics of specific ages are obsolete things.

~~~
Kaveren
even if everyone could have all their bills paid for them so they could learn
all day at any age, it's ludicrous to suggest this would "obsolete" the
discussion of how to treat intelligent kids in relation to others.

also fluid intelligence declines over time so it is absolutely in society's
interest to identify talent and assist it as early as possible.

~~~
buboard
what if intelligence becomes something that "can be cured"

------
derefr
Separating kids into streams within the same school doesn’t work, because
school is about enculturation, and the kids are still together at recess.

Separating gifted kids into “magnet schools” _sort of_ works, but they’re just
getting the same _teachers_ they’d get anywhere else—we don’t really know how
to select for teachers that can teach gifted kids any better, so we just
select for teachers with impressive resumes.

You know what works? Academies. Specifically, military academies, though
technical academies sometimes do too. Places where the students and teachers
are of a selected population, not by natural talent, but by their driven-ness
to grow and succeed. _Those_ tend to product functional, intelligent, mature
and mentally-healthy adults. And the difference is simple: in an academy, _bad
grades_ are stigmatized _by the students_ , while _good grades_ (and hard work
to _achieve_ good grades) are not. Everyone wants to be “the smartest kid in
the class”, and popularity generally correlates with how well you do in the
classes (i.e. everyone wants to be friends with the most-competent kids.)

The one core flaw of the academy model is that this constant mutual pushing of
one-another to succeed, leaves students little time to actually get to know
one-another or indulge in any outside interests. Hobbies aren’t actively
discouraged, but you can only have one to the degree that it doesn’t interfere
with your pursuit of top grades; so nobody ends up pursuing heavy-time-
investment hobbies, since few others would, so even if one can make time
themselves, there’s nobody to share it with. Since academy students are so
busy working their asses off, they also essentially treat their fellow
students as “coworkers” (interfacing with them only to accelerate their own
productivity), skipping right over the stage where they treat the children in
their own classes like friends, bonding over shared interests and the like.

Not sure if there’s any in-between, though. Give kids the time and opportunity
to create their own subcultures with their own definitions of success, and all
the problems of regular schooling re-emerge.

~~~
JoshuaEddy
Same teachers as anywhere else? At my public magnet school I was taught by a
National Teacher of the Year, a board member of a national mathematics group,
and a few PhDs. The faculty needed to guide/craft winning entries for
prestigious science competitions, and coach nationally-competitive mathematics
teams, and teach classes years past Advanced Placement courses. That is not
your run-of-the-mill teacher.

The faculty I had was enthusiastically involved in all of these things and
performed well. The few exceptions that did not live up to that level were
well known, and the very involved parents pressured the principal and
leadership to change at every opportunity - but public schools don't have much
flexibility for getting rid of teachers.

Of course, the caliber of the faculty is determined by many factors, and other
magnet schools may have terrible teachers. But it is up to the principal,
school board/leadership, parents, and teachers to give the kids the
opportunity to reach their potential.

------
barrkel
This article largely comes down to the age-old trade-off that societies need
to make: when is the individual more important vs when is the group more
important?

It seems clear that people in the upper half of the ability range suffer when
the very top of the ability range are creamed off. Does hot-housing the very
top make up for the losses in the almost-good-enough?

This is a value judgement, and I think it's disingenuous to say one is
absolutely a better trade-off than the other.

There's a lot of conflation by other people on this topic with the social
structure of US middle and high schools, with all the bullying. I think that's
an orthogonal topic and specific to US, and distinct from streaming / hot-
housing.

------
epx
My two cents:

1) Sometimes I wish I had the opportunity to get special education, but it
seems that most people complain about bullying and liked gifted education to
be protected from bullying - thank God bullying was not a big problem for me.

2) Looking in retrospect, I can remember that many colleagues and friends were
also gifted in some way or another. They just didn't care as much to get high
grades.

There was one guy that learnt English just from watching VHS movies, he could
listen to a music and understand it, something I can't do even today. Another
guy slacked the whole year and bet everything on the final exam (and passed
every time), he played guitar and keyboard (other 2 things I can't do).

------
kareninoverseas
Hm. I didn't get identified as gifted until eighth grade and I don't think
about it very hard these days. I still struggled to make friends after I was
placed in a gifted program, and in hindsight wasn't being challenged in my
courses. In college I envied students that went to more rigorous schools,
partly because I struggled a lot more with my coursework. I think being
labelled as gifted wasn't a very good thing for me, and that I should have
been encouraged to pursue my interests more instead.

------
pksdjfikkkkdsff
Curiously, he doesn't seem to present any numbers on the outcome for the
gifted children. All he says is that it is better for the other children if
they learn together with the gifted children.

I think parents of gifted children are first concerned with how well their own
children do, not the others.

I question that even "learning together" as in school is the most effective
way to learn. Some homeschoolers achieve stellar results (see Polgar sisters),
indicating that there may be better ways.

------
tmp20191105
What's with the constant attacks on testing, achievement and merit? It seems
like every other week there is something attacking the SAT, scores, testing,
achievement, etc.

------
Kaveren
i am compelled to bring up "growth mindset". the author of this article, Jo
Boaler published this book [0] which is about as textbook Growth Mindset as
you can get. the general idea is that there's very little _real_ talent gap
between people, it's all societal or whatnot.

Growth Mindset is weak scientifically. I believe that the belief in it drives
articles such as this submission, so I think it is directly related.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-
grow...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-growth-
mindset-yet/)

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/07/growth-
mindset-4-growt...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/07/growth-
mindset-4-growth-of-office/)

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/what-is-your-
mindset](https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/what-is-your-mindset)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism)

important to note that there is a necessary baseline necessary for someone's
potential to be unlocked. you can't be starving with poor nutrition and no
education and become einstein. stable home environment is important. baseline
being necessary to unlock talent does not mean talent is not important.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Limitless-Mind-Learn-Without-
Barriers...](https://www.amazon.com/Limitless-Mind-Learn-Without-
Barriers/dp/0062851748)

------
thrower123
It does a great disservice to smart kids to pick them out of the regular rank
and file completely. You really need to be aware that stupid people exist, and
how to deal with them. And that they are still people.

There are a lot of smart people that have spent their entire lives in a bubble
that is only inhabited by people at least a standard deviation above average,
if not more. And it shows.

------
pkaye
Seems like the gifted kids are teaching the rest of the students. Maybe the
school should be paying them a salary for doing their job.

------
ThomPete
One Problem is that parents will try and get into the GT schools by hiring
some tutor to help them prepare. The reality is that some of these kids arent
really gifted and talented and doesent learn easilyy which actually makes
their lives horrible when they mannage to get in.

------
jariel
In my Ontario school the advanced classes were simply an option. Anyone could
enrol. You get the advantage of mostly kids who want to learn without the
social difficulties. Nobody is told that they're 'special/not special'. It
works.

------
crb002
Lawyer, FB exec, doctor, ... the cohort of my talented and gifted class would
beg to differ.

------
munherty
I believe a focus the whys would be helpful in this discussion. Most comments
seem to accept the status quo rather than asking Why do we have bullies? Why
is being smart "not cool"?

------
pdonis
The article headline is misleading: the subhead gets at the real issue: "The
inherent dangers in telling students that their abilities are fixed".

------
macawfish
Really there just needs to be a much higher teacher/student ratio all around
so that every learner can get the unique attention they deserve.

------
naasking
"Better achievement" isn't the only relevant metric. There are plenty of other
reasons why separation could be justified.

------
amai
In sports it is the default to bring together similar talented kids. Why not
also do the same when studying?

------
yellowapple
So wait, what exactly is meant by "de-tracked"? Does that mean that students
are not allowed to advance faster if they happen to be quicker at mastering
certain subjects? If I placed into Algebra in middle school when the "normal"
course for my grade is Pre-Algebra, would I be allowed to take Algebra or
would I be forced to take Pre-Algebra?

If so, then given how much I struggled to stay engaged even with "tracked"
courses, I can guarantee that I wouldn't have graduated high school. I
would've fallen even harder into the "I already know I'm gonna pass all the
quizzes and tests, so why bother with paying attention in class or doing this
homework?" trap.

I'm fully on-board with helping students get out of academic ruts and regain
their footing and not feel like they're being left behind, and giving them
whatever extra resources are necessary to help them do so. I'm _not at all_
on-board with holding back the higher-achieving students to give some illusion
that "hey, you poor-achieving student's aren't so poor-achieving after all".
It's an insult to _both_ sets of students.

\----

The article's sources, meanwhile, don't seem to actually relate to what's
written in the article. Most egregious:

> [Eight Bay Area school districts found similar results] when they de-tracked
> middle-school mathematics and provided professional development to teachers.
> In 2014, 63 percent of students were in advanced classes, whereas in 2015
> only 12 percent were in advanced classes and everyone else was taking Math
> 8. The overall achievement of the students significantly increased after de-
> tracking. The cohort of students in eighth-grade mathematics in 2015 were 15
> months ahead of the previous cohort of students who were mainly in advanced
> classes.

The link (the part between square-brackets) points to a screenshot of a report
(not the report itself, a _screenshot_ of it; who in the actual hell does
that‽) that has zero to do with the text after it.

> Recent national data show the same downsides to ability grouping: [In the
> National Assessment of Educational Progress study for 2017], elementary
> schools that reported using reading groups “almost always” scored lower on
> average than those that used them “hardly ever.”

Of the three links within that linked source, zero of them contain the phrases
"almost always" or "hardly ever". Whence did the author quote these phrases?

> The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on
> education that is free to all readers.

Absolutely nothing about this article was in-depth, I was unable (in the ten
minutes I allotted myself to read this article and actually check sources) to
actually validate whether or not it was fact-based (which leads me to believe
it was not), and I get a strong feeling that nothing about this article was
unbiased.

------
droithomme
Grade advancement and radical acceleration of the profoundly gifted in a 20
year study:

[https://www.davidsongifted.org/search-
database/entry/a10489](https://www.davidsongifted.org/search-
database/entry/a10489)

------
trempdig
The author of this article is an academic fraud who makes unsubstantiated
claims in everything she does. Jo Boaler has an agenda without the data to
support it, and her lies are used to support structural changes to school
programs. Instead of responding to critics with facts and information, she
just calls everyone who criticizes her a “bully”.

[https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v8n5.htm](https://www.nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v8n5.htm)

~~~
knowingathing
what are your thoughts on this? [https://web.stanford.edu/~joboaler/Jo-Boaler-
reveals-attacks...](https://web.stanford.edu/~joboaler/Jo-Boaler-reveals-
attacks-by-Milgram-and-Bishop.pdf)

~~~
trempdig
She does absolutely nothing to dispute the points they made about her actual
research. It’s ad hominem attacks on her critics and pointing out her own
credentials. She’s never refuted any of their attacks on her work itself,
because she knows her work can never be replicated.

~~~
midasz
Did or did you not create a new account solely to bash on Dr. Boaler?

~~~
trempdig
I did not. However, her continued attacks on real science did upset me enough
to make a new account to comment (I forgot my old password). But if I had made
an anonymous account to bash her it would make sense, considering the
irrational rabid behavior of her fan base that ignores all of the reproducible
studies in favor of her feel-good frauds.

~~~
dang
Actually the evidence suggests that you did create this account for that
purpose. Either way, we've banned the account for breaking the site
guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21455081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21455081).
Please stop creating accounts to do that on HN.

------
40something
Fake news like always. The high achievers need to work with other high
achievers to be productive. This happens naturally in the free market and real
world (FANG).

------
jstewartmobile
Educational bureaucrats are compromised dregs and monsters. Their paymasters
want high-value cogs. Gifted program is there to preserve the value. The rest
of the program is there to reduce them to cogs. The result is--at best!--
broken people with big bank accounts and nice offices, struggling to fill the
void.

In other words, home-school your kids. Give them goals outside of pleasing
some salaryperson who doesn't even like them.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Yes, homeschool should be considered as at least an option if you care about
your childrens' education.

The rest of the parent comment is paranoid drivel, which I do _not_ endorse.

~~~
jstewartmobile
did you go to public school? an ordinary one?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Some of the time. Define "ordinary".

Also state why you think that's a relevant question.

~~~
jstewartmobile
"Ordinary" being the typical sort of public school most children in your
city/county/etc would go to. A school that pre-selects students based on race,
wealth, test scores, etc would not count as ordinary for obvious reasons.

If what I wrote was drivel, it should be very easy to refute. Just labeling it
as drivel seems like a cop-out--driven more by ideology than first-hand
experience.

~~~
perl4ever
Let's say there is a city (somewhere in the northern half of the US) that has
seen better days, due to the rise and fall of local industry in the 20th
century, and there is a town/suburb that has much higher property values and
better schools. The students in the suburban school(s) are much more likely to
go to college than in the city schools. The suburb is nearly all white, with
lots of parents with well-paying STEM jobs, while the city is not. De facto
segregation. Which public school is "ordinary"?

~~~
jstewartmobile
will also add that i think you asked a perfectly fair question, and have no
idea why you've been downvoted

------
macawfish
The arrogance and ignorance in some of these comments is astounding

------
scarejunba
Damn, America is so rich it just invents problems. When I was a child, you
worked hard in school or your life was going to suck. By American standards,
your life already sucked because you defecated in the fields. So you did
everything in your capacity to not keep it that way.

I'm in America now. Did it the hard way. It wasn't as easy as showing up to
class and having the choice of working hard to apply to some of the best
educational institutions in the world.

Bloody hell, it's no wonder everyone in America is terrified of immigrants.
They're going to eat your lunch because they will go through all these things
that ruin you and instead come out resilient and able instead of reduced to
just smoking weed all the time or whatever other activity you've decided to
blame on society.

