
The Bright Students Left Behind - tokenadult
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-bright-students-left-behind-1440024541-lMyQjAxMTA1NDI3MDkyNTAyWj
======
amykhar
So often, when it comes to gifted education, I hear people crying elitism and
even making snide remarks about gifted students, which nobody seems to have a
problem with.

What people are missing is that average and below average students are
challenged in school from day one. And, in being challenged, they learn to
stretch and to work harder to learn the material.

So often, gifted programs do not exist in very early elementary school. Gifted
kids are often not challenged. It's all too easy. They learn to coast by
without studying. They learn that tests and homework are a joke. So, when the
day comes that things aren't quite as easy, they don't have the necessary
skills to help them level up.

Every kid deserves to be challenged and to be taught to do their very best.
Sadly, in the United States, that didn't happen - even before the stupid No
Child Left Behind rules kicked in.

~~~
tcfunk
This, I feel, is the exact story of my childhood...I figured out at somewhere
around 6th grade or so that I could get all the same grades w/o doing any of
the homework or studying. So I figured, why bother?

Fast-forward a few years to college, and it turns out that I have no idea how
to study, how to push myself to do the work required for classes. I had a very
hard time turning that around.

~~~
_rs
Are there any resources you might recommend to others who have fallen down
that same kind of path?

~~~
steverb
I had the same issue. TOtally quit doing homework in the 5th grade, coasted
through highschool (mostly) with a 3.5.

Fortunately (for me) I had a not so good HS Counselor who I never met and who
never explained to me that it was possible to go to college without having
rich parents.

So I joined the Army straight out of high school, and that's where I learned
how to work my ass off. Not mentally so much, but in general how to have an
expectation of myself that I should always keep pushing myself to do better.

That was 25 years ago mind you. Your mileage will definitely vary.

~~~
jackmaney
When I was in academia, some of the students I rooted for the most were non-
traditional students, especially those who were former/current military. None
of that "b...but, when will I ever use this in REAL LIFE! Waaahhh!" or "will
this be on the test?". Just a willingness to work their ass off.

~~~
bigtunacan
Personally I find the, "Will this be used in real life?" question a very
important one that sadly isn't answered frequently enough. There is a
disconnect between educators and students who are there to prepare to enter
the workforce.

~~~
jackmaney
That's the problem: college does not--nor should it--solely exist for
preparation to enter the workforce. That's why we need a resurgence of trade
programs.

~~~
marcosdumay
Anyway, for every course that is not Math, everything you learn was created
for a reason (make that a "most things you learn" for Math).

Yet, before one enters an university, teachers almost universally refuse to
answer this question.

------
Spooky23
I was in middle/high school when our district flipped the switch. I went to a
small school district (grades 6-12 in one building, 80 kids in the graduating
class), so the impact was really easy to spot.

Previously they had four classes in core subjects, that were roughly
segregated by capability. They switched to a "blended" approach when I was in
9th grade. The district was like 95% white, so racial factor wasn't really
present.

I was in the "smart" group. The difference was night and day. Classes that had
once hosted pretty intense debate and academic competition got disrupted by
the disruptive kids. The entire dynamic of the classroom experience shifted
from learning stuff to dealing with the class clowns.

The only exceptions were history, which I was lucky to be among the 5 kids
picked for an AP class shared between districts, and Math, where I was on an
accelerated path and the jokers were in remedial classes.

In any case, it fundamentally changed the course of our futures. I was
fortunate to have gone to a good college, but many of my friends who came from
poorer families, especially farm families ended up going to community college
or some other less optimal path. And while it may have been more egalitarian
to treat everyone the same, the kids on the bottom didn't really go anywhere.

~~~
danharaj
> And while it may have been more egalitarian to treat everyone the same, the
> kids on the bottom didn't really go anywhere.

Top-down controlling bureaucrats might think it more egalitarian, but treating
everyone indifferently to their particular needs is not egalitarian.

The world is rich enough to provide ample resources for all children to meet
all their needs. If children and educators could organize education to meet
their needs instead of being forced to obey governments or markets, that would
be egalitarian.

------
tvanantwerp
One of the unintended lessons I learned in school was that pushing myself was
_not_ a requirement for success. Tests and homework were easy for me. As a
result, school became that place I had to go during the day until I could come
home and play video games or otherwise goof off.

It took a very long time for me to internalize the values of hard work and
studying, since I never needed either in school. It depresses me to speculate
on where I could be and what I could have accomplished if I'd been pushed
harder at an age where I was too naive to know that I should push myself.

~~~
douche
The worst thing is the discouragement that public schooling gives gifted
students when they do push themselves. I was always getting in trouble for
reading ahead in English class, or moving too quickly through the lessons in
math. Creates too much work for the teachers grading, I suppose. They also
don't like it when you point out that they are teaching falsehoods.

~~~
ajmurmann
Having gone to high school in Germany and gotten my Masters degree in the US
I'm really surprised by this. All the teachers I had would have loved you for
studying ahead. Teachers even enjoyed arguing with me when I thought they were
wrong.

~~~
danielweber
I still remember a student getting yelled at for working ahead in the book in
1st grade. I guess I learned my lesson because I never did it.

He wasn't even a very good student, and my reaction (that I was wise enough to
not vocalize) was "well, he's finally doing some work, this is a good thing,
right?"

There are a bunch of people in school administration who have as priority #1
"make the system as easy to run as possible." Priority #2 is to drive out
anyone who questions priority #1.

------
will_brown
This article seems like a submarine from a wealthy lobby group trying to
influence the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind. For starters the
article shows a complete failure to understand educational funding, example:

>Both Ontario and Taiwan treat gifted children as eligible for “special
education,” much like disabled students, giving them access to additional
resources.

So does the US...Perhaps the misunderstanding is much broader than I give
credit, but in the US everyone is entitled to a _free and appropriate_
education, including ESE students. It seems people think ESE is just for
disabled children, but it is also for gifted students. As a lawyer who
advocated on behalf of ESE students, I saw everything from a disabled child
being subsidized to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to a blind
student being denied a ~$100 reading program (maybe one of the most rewarding
moments of my legal career was getting the school to agree to purchase that
program - but was a lawyer really necessary?), and advocating for a gifted ESE
high school student who attended some classes at the local university via duel
enrollment.

If US students' scores are lagging behind their international counter-parts it
is not because gifted students in the US are not getting funding. There are
more resources now than ever for gifted students, including: duel enrollments,
online curriculum, and vouchers for private/charter schools.

~~~
ironchef
will, I respectfully disagree.

My family has been involved in gifted education in a number of ways for
several decades. While ESE does encompass both sides of the spectrum, gifted
funding, in general is massively shortfunded compared to the other side of the
spectrum. Another fun fact is that those that are gifted can also have
learning disabilities (You can, for example, be gifted and have dyslexia).

If you want to get specific, here are some examples. States are largely
responsible for the funding of gifted education; however, it is _largely_ not
regulated at the federal level (in contrast with special education). In the
state of Illinois for example, there was $0 towards gifted education from 2010
- 2013. In comparison, California (with approximately 3 times the number of
students) spent approximately 44 mil per year (those 3 academic years) on
gifted education. There are plenty of statistics available at various
resources such as the NAGC. A great summary they provided:

    
    
      In 2013-14:
      14 states provided no funding to local districts for gifted education
      Of the 25 states that provided funds to districts
        8 provided $40 million or more
        9 states provided between $1 million and $10 million
        9 states have policies specifically permitting acceleration of students; 22 states leave the decision to school districts
        17 states do not collect demographic data about their gifted student population
        9 states report on the academic performance / learning growth of gifted students as a separate group on state report cards or other accountability measures

~~~
will_brown
I am not saying the numbers you provide are inaccurate, but they reflect the
data of a special interest group who is trying to raise money. Alternatively,
we can look at just 9 states that disclosed their funding for gifted programs
in 2010-2011 and see an annual budget of >$1B for gifted program funding:

FL: 267M GA: 301M TX: 138M NC: 68M OH: 65M VA: 45M LA: 65M SC: 26M AR: 25M

Moreover, examples such as Illinois you highlighted don't tell a full story by
saying $0 of funding for gifted programs. Illinois did cut all _state_ funding
of the gifted program (mostly citing a $100B pension shortfall) but the gifted
programs are still funded by the school districts, this does leave gaps or
haves/have-nots but that is one of the issues that vouchers are intended to
balance to ensure a _free and appropriate_ education. When discussing funding
of gifted programs we should refrain from comparing it to "the other side of
the ESE spectrum", because it is not a give and take from one group to the
other, and even if it were it is not an appropriate comparison in terms of
overall number of students, and average cost/student for services. Otherwise
we would look at non-ESE students and say they don't get any special funding,
or kids who qualify for free lunch

~~~
ironchef
"I am not saying the numbers you provide are inaccurate, but they reflect the
data of a special interest group who is trying to raise money." \- That's a
fair criticism; however, like any other data, trying to find "true" data is
quite difficult. For example, if I look at the florida number (which I found
via) that also includes money for low SES and ESL students. I don't see what
percentage unfortunately. I think it's fair to say not all 267 M is spent in
what is traditionally considered gifted education in that case. That being
said... a billion dollars? Extrapolating for a moment and looking at the
states you picked they're approximately 1/3 of the population of the united
states. That would suggest around 3 billion dollars being spent nationally...
We have approximately 50 million k-12 students in the US. With around 5 to 10%
of that population being gifted that would give us 600 to 1200 per gifted
pupil in additional spending. Average spending per pupil (non-gifted) is
around 9k or so. My point is we trivially fund gifted education in this
country.

"it is not a give and take from one group to the other". I know ... and that's
why I pointed out that people can belong to both groups (gifted dyslexics for
example).

"that is one of the issues that vouchers are intended to balance". Intent is
great. That doesn't mean it produces said results, does it?

------
rayiner
An important fact to keep in mind whenever PISA scores come up is that the
U.S. has far more children in poverty than pretty much every western nation
you'd compare it to:
[http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/CO2_2_ChildPoverty_Jan2014.pdf](http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/CO2_2_ChildPoverty_Jan2014.pdf)
(over 20%, versus under 5% for Finland or under 10% for Germany). If we
adjusted PISA scores to reflect those demographics, the U.S. would come out
about the same as France, Germany, or the U.K., though still a step behind
Finland: [http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-
testin...](http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing).

Also:

> Unsurprisingly we found that culture, values and attitudes matter a great
> deal.

Ultimately, if that's the case, there is very little hope for improving
American education. It's almost impossible to force cultural change on a
country.

~~~
normloman
> It's almost impossible to force cultural change on a country.

A few decades ago, a majority of Americans didn't support gay marriage. Now it
has majority support, and is legal in every state. This didn't happen by
accident either. A lot of groups were involved in promoting gay rights and
funding legal battles across the country. This isn't the first time this
happened either: women's rights, civil rights, etc. Even today, organized
groups are winning hearts and minds in the fight for criminal justice reform
and marijuana legalization. So it's very possible to instigate cultural change
(perhaps force is a strong word). It just takes a long time.

~~~
harryh
It's probably easier to get a person to change their opinion on what someone
else can do than to get them to change their own behavior.

------
sopooneo
When I taught in a "disadvantaged high school" in Boston, the metric by which
the school was judged was not the average student score on the state's
standardized test (the MCAS), but _the percentage of students achieving
minimal proficiency_. I think this is the same across the country.

So the pressure is to keep pulling and pulling those last few students up over
the bar. There is no fundamental incentive to help the kids that can already
pass, because that has zero effect on the metric by which you are judged.

~~~
emodendroket
To be fair, while I don't think we're doing it the right way it is really
shameful how many American students do not have even the most basic
proficiency in things like reading.

------
clavalle
This is why my family and so many people we know are either homeschooling or
pooling resources to create small schools for their kids to attend where we
have some sort of control over their education and expectations of the
students.

You can't get tailored clothes at Wal-Mart and you can't educate high
performing kids in public school.

A lot of people have a problem with this approach but, you know, it is easy to
ignore those vague ideologically driven arguments when it comes to doing what
is best for your own kids especially when you are seeing great results.

I have a feeling more people are going to go the bespoke education route even
if it takes one parent staying home to do it.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
While I plan to do the same for my own children unless the system dramatically
changes, this approach unfairly favors the middle and upper classes who have
the time to do this. The lower classes simply don't have the time and money to
do this.

That said, if you do have the time and money, more power to you! No reason to
disadvantage your kids because the government and bureaucracy can't do it
right.

~~~
AlexEatsKittens
Very true. It's a feedback loop as well. Schools perform poorly, so affluent
people remove their high-performing children, which lowers the average
performance of the school and gives it less funding. And so on.

The thing is, you can't blame people for optimizing for their own children,
but doing so drags down the quality even further for everyone else. It's a
problem that requires some serious intervention.

~~~
clavalle
I honestly think that is a 'treat the symptom' analysis.

We need to think about why there are poor performers to begin with and it has
very little to do with the few hundred dollars per student a school might lose
because of not hitting performance targets.

------
Beltiras
I've had several IQ tests throughout the years and consistently tested in the
highest 1% of test takers for my age class. I was skipped past first grade as
a result at the age of 5. In my opinion that was a terrible mistake. This
basically put a bullsmark on me for bullies and alienated me from my peers. At
eight I wanted to be relieved of class duty since I loved the library and felt
I learnt a lot more from assimilating information I wanted rather than being
force-fed stuff I had no interest in. I wish I had the retort I have no when
asked how this would result in a rounded education. My opinion is that kids
will become interested in a field and start studying it and at some point in
time they will need more practical things and ask their elders how to solve
the things that would "round out" their education. Instead I just felt bored
and my grades suffered. Consistent in teachers remarks is that I could be
doing so much better. It sounds a bit hypocritical to me now that I actually
asked to be able to do better, was refused and later scolded for not doing
better. I was reading advanced physics texts at age 9, understood the
difference between GR and SR. I wish that someone would have poked me in the
general direction of Plato. I feel that if someone had, my intellectual
development would have been accelerated a lot by it. Instead I was reading a
collection of folk legends, the mythology of the Norse and a whole lot of
popular fiction (both science and fantasy). I turned into a CS grad eventually
and make a living coding. I think it would have happened a lot faster if there
was a real program for misfit-brights instead of the minor changes to regular
curricula I endured.

My point is that it's not enough to detect the brights. You have to do
something substantive to succeed in nurturing them.

------
ColinWright
Reminds me of the short story:

[http://www.thebostonbachelor.com/2008/examination-day-by-
hen...](http://www.thebostonbachelor.com/2008/examination-day-by-henry-
seslar/)

I won't post spoilers alerts, but the mere fact that I put this link here
should be enough for you to deduce the ending.

~~~
hguant
I thought you were going to post this - considerably longer, but an
interesting take on future education.

[http://www.abelard.org/asimov.php](http://www.abelard.org/asimov.php)

------
imareaver
"Among the handful of American high achievers, only one in eight comes from
the bottom socioeconomic quartile. In Canada it’s one in four; Germany one in
six; and Singapore one in three."

One in three high achievers in Singapore come from the bottom quartile? That
means the bottom quartile is OVERrepresented among high achievers, which
sounds very odd to me.

~~~
peterfirefly
Recent immigration from mainland China?

If the newcomers are bright, hungry, and hardworking whereas the native
Singapore Chinese are by now a bit more laid back + if the Singapore Malay are
not as bright, hungry, and hardworking but more established so above them in
SES, then it might make sense.

Singapore is far from ethnically homogeneous.

~~~
sopooneo
In Boston high schools, immigrant students make up close to _or exactly_ 100%
of the valedictorians each year.

------
leni536
I studied in Hungary and I'm really glad that there is a really high quality
science journal aimed for high school students. It has a competition in
mathematics, physics and informatics. You have to send back solutions to
problems from the monthly issues.

[http://www.komal.hu/info/bemutatkozas.e.shtml](http://www.komal.hu/info/bemutatkozas.e.shtml)

They translate the problems to English and I think high school students from
other countries can participate too, though it's mainly a Hungarian
competition. This really helped me learning physics through tricky problems. I
could never solve any problems from the "A" labeled math problems, though I
never tried since high school.

~~~
peterfirefly
That journal was basically Erdős' high school, wasn't it?

Glad to see that it's still around :)

(Also glad to see that they had girls on the high score roster right from the
beginning!)

------
roymurdock
At the high school & college level, the grading structure is a major part of
the problem in the US.

If a student needs to answer 90-100% of a test correctly to get an A, there
must be a serious lack of rigor and choice to the material he/she is studying.

I studied abroad in London at the LSE for a year of college. The grading
system at the LSE made _so_ much more sense to me.

An "A" in the UK system is >70%. LSE exams reserve a full 30% range for the
recognition of genius and/or mastery of the subject. A common joke at LSE is
that “any paper scoring above 90% is basically ready to be published in a
journal”. This is not to say that students attempt create new economic models
during their exams, but it does imply that a 90% answer will require an
extremely thorough understanding of the theory behind the subject, above and
beyond the class slides and lecture material. A solid understanding of the
material (70%) is still rewarded with the highest distinction; thus impossibly
high expectations do not cause grade disinflation or penalties.

The UK system presents you with a buffet of knowledge, pushing you to sample
that one extra topic that lies just beyond what you think you can comfortably
retain. The US system forces predetermined topics down your throat, deducting
points if you find one topic unbearably boring, overly complex, or simply
flawed.

I discussed the experience in more depth here:
[http://roymurdock.com/essays/2014/06/the-difference-
between-...](http://roymurdock.com/essays/2014/06/the-difference-between-uk-
and-us-universities/)

~~~
aianus
Why go above and beyond to get a 95% when you end up with the same grade as
someone who got 70%? How can grad schools and employers distinguish between
someone who did ok and someone really good? That grading system and letter
grading in general don't make any sense.

The college I went to put your percentage grades directly on your transcript
and every percentage point went towards your class ranking.

~~~
peterfirefly
He has a point (expressed in a roundabout way) about grading systems with low
ceilings. I believe you are expressing the same point in straightforward
manner: Low ceilings are bad.

Your point: top grade at 70%? That's bad, can't distinguish between ok and
really good.

His point: top grade at 90%? So nobody is ever taught anything hard, then?
Otherwise, how would so many people be able to get the top grade?

~~~
aianus
> Otherwise, how would so many people be able to get the top grade?

You had to be really good to get 90% at my school. Top decile at least. I
don't know what he's talking about.

------
j2kun
I did gifted programs all through elementary school and these were also a
joke. There was far less supervision and it was not significantly more
challenging. It wasn't until I was given somewhat unstructured time to follow
my interests (in late high school) that I found ways to challenge myself with
things I actually cared about.

------
calibraxis
> _" While everyone focuses on boosting the weakest students, America’s
> smartest children are no longer being pushed to do their best."_

Ugh. I went to a so-called "gifted school", and this article's whole mindset
is repugnant. For one thing, it's humiliating to anyone who got "weak student"
stamped on their forehead... particularly galling coming from an educational
system run by administrators who avoid intelligence at every opportunity. I
know perceptive high-achievers haunted by revenge fantasies where they
humiliate those who laughed at them for being in the remedial track.

And it's really discussing a certain kind of intelligence. Smart children are
often booted from the institution and end up selling drugs or whatever. The
desirable "smart children" have assignable curiosity, can be herded into
professional/managerial type jobs, etc. Maybe they despise the know-nothing
teaching the class, but they'll do what it takes to get to the next rung.
([http://disciplined-minds.com/](http://disciplined-minds.com/) and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8hfUkmk6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8hfUkmk6Q))

A lot of people walking down the street no doubt have great ideas for how a
fundamentally better educational system would work. But they can't really do
anything about it; who'll listen to them?

> _" If we cannot bring ourselves to push smart kids as far as they can go, we
> will watch and eventually weep as other countries surpass us in producing
> tomorrow’s inventors, entrepreneurs, artists and scientists."_

Always at the end an appeal to patriotism, partitioning ourselves into nations
where the weaker ones get bullied. Gotta "push" kids around (don't want to
rely on dangerous self-motivation), because we'll weep if those we're sitting
on start doing something better than us!

~~~
octorian
> I know perceptive high-achievers haunted by revenge fantasies where they
> humiliate those who laughed at them for being in the remedial track.

Ahh yes, every time I manage another great achievement, my parents joke about
how to best rub it in the face of that school administrator who said I'd grow
up to be a pizza delivery guy. Of course we still haven't followed through,
and its really way too late now for them to even remember.

(For context, I went to an over-achiever magnet school my freshman year of HS.
They pushed so hard, that I basically broke and became an academic failure.
The administrator in question was at that school. I did the remaining 3 years
at my normal HS, where I actually did quite well. Though it did take those 3
years to recover my GPA.)

------
DrNuke
If we talk West and non-wealthy backgrounds, bright students must take care of
themselves: do self-learning, look for role models, start messing with small
projects, find a way to second own pace. Fundamentally, they must survive
their own gift without losing enthusiasm or drive.

------
stdbrouw
Certainly, some enrichment programs have been shown to work, but others, like
the track system in which students are grouped into different classes by
ability, has in many cases been shown to be not particularly beneficial for
either less or more talented students. See e.g. Jo Boaler's "When even the
winners are losers: Evaluating the experiences of top set' students"
([http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/002202797184116#....](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/002202797184116#.Vdc1KFOqq8Q)).

It's also funny how the only standard for a well-rounded education seems to
have become whether you perform well on standardized tests or have what it
takes to become the next "inventors, entrepreneurs, artists and scientists."
Everyone seems to want gifted children to receive a deeper education, not a
broader one.

I'm an absolute proponent of differentiation and enrichment for gifted
students, just don't make the mistake of thinking that the solution is as
simple as giving smart people a more challenging curriculum and equally smart
peers and you're done. A lot is possible within (or in addition to) mixed-
ability classes.

Also, are we really seriously still doing this whole "BUT LOOK AT FINLAND,
LOOK AT SOUTH KOREA" dance?

~~~
yourapostasy
I strongly suspect the mixed-ability class arrangements works when the band of
abilities is not "too" wide, and especially when the lower ability segments
are not linked to behavior-based issues leading to behavioral classroom
disruptions. Too often, I see little to no emphasis within these arrangements
to link intensive mental health and other support infrastructure counseling to
assist students and their families, and manage behavioral issues before
introducing those students into mixed-ability classes.

A big advantage I see in mixed-ability classes where behavioral issues are
managed ahead of time is the opportunity for the students who grasp a
particular topic sooner start teaching and explaining it to their peers who
don't grasp it yet, which cements their understanding, and this can continue
onwards down the age and and ability spectrums. There is nearly nothing quite
like having to teach a topic to really reveal how well you grasp it.

~~~
AlexEatsKittens
The high-school I attended used that method. I was often forced to spend
significant chunks of class time teaching other students how to do their work.
It was frustrating, and generally a waste of time. It made me hate going to
class, because I couldn't spend my time learning, I had to dedicate my efforts
to trying to get some kid who would rather be "making beats" on his desk to
learn basic math.

I think a better idea would be to have high-performers help teach the kids at
the middle of the pack, and leave the low-performers to teachers who have the
specific skills needed to deal with their all too common behavioral problems
and lack of interest.

~~~
yourapostasy
Yes, and I suspect that the primary issue of this approach is it doesn't
scale. You need top-end teaching talent to pull it off, extremely strong
parental support, and a school that has the wherewithal to remove
uncooperative students whose behavior crosses a quality boundary, for more
intensive support elsewhere (just not in those classrooms). I've seen this
approach work well in a private school setting. But that school's endowment
was already self-funding (thus tuitions added to the capital funding but had
no real impact on operational funding that was largely drawn from interest) so
the school had no qualms whatsoever instantly dismissing any disruptive
students, and there was a line of previously-passed-over, eager students ready
to take their place.

Behavioral problems inside the classroom were extremely rare in that setting
(what little existed was negligible and ignorable by public school standards,
like simply doodling "to" another student), and the academic atmosphere was
far more supported by the students than I've seen in the American public
school system. Supporting your anecdotal experience, many of the attending
students were either honor roll or in the highest academic tracks in their
previous public school lives; at that private school, they were ranked as
average.

In the public school system I've never seen this approach work beyond one-off,
heroic single-teacher-led efforts. Once that teacher leaves, the approach
leaves with them; I've never seen a public school officially run classes this
way. Ironically, the "more primitive" one-room schools of American yore were
supposedly run this way, but I've never been able to locate academic studies
of their effectiveness.

------
JustSomeNobody
I had an absolutely amazing principal in H.S. She took notice of me and made
it her mission to make sure I wasn't bored to the point I would quit. Some of
my teachers did too, while others told me to just quit. I would get excellent
marks in math and science related subjects, but fail everything else. I would
complain the only thing different between sophomore, junior and senior English
was the color of the book and one had to write a term paper their junior year.

So I slept. A lot. I'd stay up late on my Commodore programming and be
exhausted the next day. I remember waking up in my second year accounting
class one day to the teacher telling some students, "When your scores are as
high as his in my class, you can sleep too." I actually felt bad because I
learned that day I was bothering other students. Not enough to change though.
I was stubborn.

------
Zigurd
If you live within driving distance of Worcester, MA, there is a tuition-free
state-run 2 year school called Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science that
kids can transfer into for their junior and senior year of high school.

The first year is taught by Mass Academy faculty and the second year kids take
courses at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

This program was started to address exactly the issue of bright kids in
schools that don't have the resources of, for example, Acton-Boxborough.

------
mrdrozdov
Maybe school is not the place for gifted students to grow. There are online
communities, meetups, and more routes outside of the classroom that you could
take advantage of. You could probably talk to schools and colleges beforehand
to make sure that you could take time out of the day to do these things. In
the worst case scenario, you simply ignore school if they are not willing to
help you pursue personal growth, and start your own company.

------
jseliger
In 1991 Daniel J. Singal published "The Other Crisis in American Education" in
_The Atlantic_ :
[http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/educatio/singalf.ht...](http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/educatio/singalf.htm)
, which makes the same point but did so 25 years ago.

------
qudat
One size fits all is cheaper and easier to manage for an inept government to
handle. Education should emphasize experimentation. How can we expect a system
to actively challenge students to think critically when the system itself was
designed without any critical thought whatsoever?

------
speeder
Here in Brazil we are having a similar problem...

Also I witnessed closely, its bad effects.

Example: In Brazil universities frequently has students separated in classes,
then the whole class go to see the necessary teacher (ie: very different than
the "credit" system used in US where each student choose what he will attend),
the university where I went, they had a common, but rarely admitted practice
of separating the classes according to the ranking in the entrance tests.

I ended in the A class, we had a B and a C class. Yet, the C class (not only
of my course, but of some others too, or of other years) frequently
outperformed the A and B classes, even if their students were frequently
obviously outright dumb... The reason is that the C class students learned to
do two things: one, work hard, including being very creative in cheating if
needed, C class students never shied from hard work if it was needed, and two,
they were really, really good at being friends of teachers and other staff,
and socialize their way into success.

The A class, that theoretically had the best students (example of difference:
A class students frequently already had past experience in the job we were
learning, and was the class that least needed to ask questions to teachers,
also in simple enough tests always scored very high), but it don't worked,
most A class students didn't knew how to hard work, they would just coast, and
when some advanced teamworking was needed (example: team of 7 students asked
to make a 6 month long project that would affect the grades of all subjects),
the A class students would often start to fight each other (sometimes
physically), have big egos, don't cooperate, and so on.

Altough this is what I saw from personal experience, I got curious and looked
more into it, and saw this everywhere, the smartest kids fail in real life,
they don't work hard, don't socialize decently, and when facing a big
challenge they fail, they panic, or get confused, or procastinate or lot, or
give up before even starting.

The "C class" kids although they often are the typical party animals
(frequently going to bars, getting drunk, being rowdy, skipping unecessary
work, etc...) when they face a challenge, they take it, they work hard, either
to do it the right way, or to do it the wrong way, or to figure how to avoid
it completely, but they don't give up, they just figure how to do it somehow.

Practical final example: I once went to some seminars in a hard to understand
subject, the speakers were all students, it was mandatory to all students to
speak. The brightest students, gave boring seminars, everything was correct,
but not really detailed, and the work was clearly half-assed. Now, watching
the seminars of the students that were infamous for being often drunkards and
dumb was awesome, some of these just creatively figured a way to nail it. One
guy gave a really, really awesome seminar, 100% correct, 100% charismatic, and
very detailed. Later I learned that what he did was meticulously create a
script for the seminar using his comedy skills to copy, paste and edit parts
of books, then record himself reading the script, then play that recording
during the seminar while hiding the headphone on his hair, it is work
intensive, and he don't understood half of what he said, but he got a 10 of 10
grade, and I understood the subject he needed to teach very well. Another guy
just tried to learn everything he needed to say like if he was an actor, and
just acted his way through, he also don't understood shit of what he said, but
everyone else did, and he got a 9.5 of 10

~~~
stuxnet79
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I find this very fascinating. I wonder
if the phenomenon you describe has been subjected to a scientific experiment
... anybody in HN have any insight into the psychological basis of this?

------
backtoyoujim
Did anyone here benefit from a No Child Left Behind program?

------
sarciszewski
Anyone have a non-paywalled excerpt?

------
eemph
>It is no secret that American students overall lag their international peers.

An interesting opinion that I've heard from a person who's made a huge
contribution to US education is that if you take high school students from
some US minority group, say, American Scandinavians, they'll turn out to be
doing better than Scandinavians in Scandinavia, and the same goes for most
other minority groups (apparently including American Chinese), as well as for
white Americans vs the population of most other countries. What brings the
average down, however, is the fact that there are so many (mostly) South
American immigrants who are forced to study in a language other than their
native language, which is not the case in most other countries.

I have not fact-checked this, but it is an interesting perspective.

~~~
peterfirefly
The first things you say are correct but then it goes subtly wrong.

Yes, studying in a foreign language is a hindrance -- but somehow it seems to
be less of a hindrance for European and East Asian immigrants than for South
American immigrants with little European admixture. In fact, even native
English-speaking pupils/students of South American (and African) descent tend
do rather bad.

There is an alternative theory that this is mostly an IQ issue -- and that IQ
is heritable, largely genetic, and that one should expect different
populations to have different mean IQs (given vastly different historical
evolutionary pressures and a belief in evolution itself). This is extremely
well backed with research.

~~~
nmrm2
There's a nice Scientific American blog post about this hypothesis by John
Horgan; the essential argument is that this research question is a pointless
area of inquiry because the answer should make no difference in a non-evil
society:

 _> I'm torn over how to respond to research on race and intelligence. Part of
me wants to scientifically rebut the IQ-related claims of Herrnstein, Murray,
Watson and Richwine._

(for example, the claim it's "extremely well backed" that IQ is both
"heritable" and "largely genetic", when both are hotly contested, the former
is impossible to have decent evidence for given all of the confounding
variables, and the latter ("largely") is definitely not true, even given the
necessarily poor state of evidence on this question:)

 _> For example, to my mind the single most important finding related to the
debate over IQ and heredity is the dramatic rise in IQ scores over the past
century. This so-called Flynn effect, which was discovered by psychologist
James Flynn, undercuts claims that intelligence stems primarily from nature
and not nurture._

 _> But another part of me wonders whether research on race and
intelligence—given the persistence of racism in the U.S. and elsewhere --
should simply be banned. I don't say this lightly. For the most part, I am a
hard-core defender of freedom of speech and science. But research on race and
intelligence—no matter what its conclusions are—seems to me to have no
redeeming value._

 _> Far from it. The claims of researchers like Murray, Herrnstein and
Richwine could easily become self-fulfilling, by bolstering the confirmation
bias of racists and by convincing minority children, their parents and
teachers that the children are innately, immutably inferior. (See Post-
postscript below.)_

 _> Why, given all the world’s problems and needs, would someone choose to
investigate this thesis? What good could come of it? Are we really going to
base policies on immigration, education and other social programs on allegedly
innate racial differences? Not even the Heritage Foundation advocates a return
to such eugenicist policies._

 _> Perhaps instead of arguing over the evidence for or against theories
linking race and IQ we should see them as simply irrelevant to serious
intellectual discourse. I'm sympathetic toward the position spelled out by
Noam Chomsky in his usual blunt fashion in his 1987 book Language and Problems
of Knowledge:_

 _> "Surely people differ in their biologically determined qualities. The
world would be too horrible to contemplate if they did not. But discovery of a
correlation between some of these qualities is of no scientific interest and
of no social significance, except to racists, sexists and the like. Those who
argue that there is a correlation between race and IQ and those who deny this
claim are contributing to racism and other disorders, because what they are
saying is based on the assumption that the answer to the question makes a
difference; it does not, except to racists, sexists and the like."_

~~~
janlin1999
Doesn't Chomsky make a pretty big assumption there? I feel that he chills
intellectual inquiry in this area by calling anyone interested in these
questions racists and so forth.

It seems that there are legitimate questions that could be informed by this
line of inquiry. For example, research might affect one's opinion about race-
based affirmative action programs mandating that the admitted student body
mirror the overall population (assuming that IQ is a relevant factor in
college admissions). In the scientific realm, if IQ were indeed heritable and
if there were substantive differences across large groups of people, wouldn't
people be curious why, and by figuring out the pathway, perhaps be able to
design supplements or lifestyle changes to raise people's IQs?

I'm not saying that this area of research should be given priority, but it
does seem legitimate. As Horgan concedes, this overall sentiment does seem to
go against the grain of freedom of scientific inquiry.

~~~
nmrm2
_> For example, research might affect one's opinion about race-based
affirmative action programs mandating that the admitted student body mirror
the overall population_

No, because affirmative action programs operate from an absolute commitment to
diversity and/or a recognition of systemic violence against certain
communities in recent history. Those commitments hold (or not) regardless of
genetic variation.

 _> In the scientific realm, if IQ were indeed heritable and if there were
substantive differences across large groups of people, wouldn't people be
curious why, and by figuring out the pathway, perhaps be able to design
supplements or lifestyle changes to raise people's IQs_

There's a whole field of research called "Education" that studies essentially
this question, but not unnecessarily confined to IQ as a sole metric.

And yes, many education researchers investigate the effectiveness of
interventions in the context of communities (include racially-defined ones).

The race/IQ correlation question is totally irrelevant to the discovery and
evaluation of assessments among subcommunities.

How could knowledge of racial differences in IQ possibly do to push forward
education research? Everything we know about differences between
subcommunities points to behavioral interventions being effective, and nurture
aspects playing a dominate causal role.

And even if you want to go full on eugenics / genetic engineering, we have
some comparatively stronger hypotheses about some genetic causes for IQ
variation that are absolute (i.e., genes that effect IQ but are not correlated
with race).

So even in a crazy futuristic (I would say dystopian) world of genetic
engineering for things like intelligence, investigating racial theories is
still a waste of time.

