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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

I'm shocked, yet paradoxically unsurprised that so many of the comments here are saying "yes" to the question.

In practice, separating gifted students does two things:

1. Accelerates income inequality (there's no way the gifted students on average will do poorer than the 'regular' students)

2. Remove equality of opportunity.

What exactly is a gifted school going to do that would help gifted students and not regular students?

- Small classes? Help regular students to extent.

- Better curriculum? Hey! Helps regular students.

- More practical education? Also helps regular students

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I'm not against segregation in theory. However, in practice there's very little evidence that the gifted schools would NOT benefit regular students. If you believe that gifted students should receive more education than regular students, then that's an entirely separate discussion.

If you have evidence, I'd love to see it (I'm very interested in education, in particular).

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1. Gifted children come from the rich and poor and from all ethnicities. The way to reduce income inequality is to take the brightest students from across these diverse groups and help them achieve their potential.

2. The alternative is equality of outcome, i.e. cut down the tall poppies. This isn't a solution. Keeping gifted children lockstep with their age-mates does them serious damage that can last a lifetime.

Regular students cannot benefit from compacting the K-5 curriculum into two or three years, whereas the gifted can. The reality is that these kids need to be surrounded by their ability peers if they are going to reach their potential.

For evidence, check out the work of Miraca Gross, who did her work in Australia. She has a book called Exceptionally Gifted Children, where she details the lives of several of these kids and shows how devastating the school system can be to them if extra accommodations are not made.

1. Children come from the rich and poor and from all ethnicities. The way to reduce income inequality is to take students from across these diverse groups and help them achieve their potential.

2. False dichotomy.

I've read the book you're referring to. It doesn't make any of the claims you're making, in particular:

> Regular students cannot benefit from compacting the K-5 curriculum.

If I'm wrong (and I may, it's been a while), feel free to reply with a quote and a page number. I have the book.

In any case, the "compacting" of the K-5 curriculum is just a hack. The real solution is to get rid of such constraints to begin with. That way, students who are "gifted" will naturally just go to the next level.

The reality is this: schools for "gifted" children just tend to be better schools. The same better schools that would lead to better outcomes, for everyone. Mind you, this isn't the same as putting, for example "special-ed" students in separate classrooms.

Case and point:

> The major finding of this study is that third and fourth grade classroom teachers make only minor modifications in the regular curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students. This result holds for all types of schools sampled. It also holds for classrooms in different parts of the country and for different types of communities. Implications of these findings for researchers and gifted education specialists are discussed. [1]

[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0162353293016002...

Ok, I better understand the point you're making. You're not arguing against special treatment for the gifted; you're saying that, in practice, we should raise the standards of regular students to what is normally provided to the gifted, since the gifted have better education provided to them. Then we'll see improvements across the board. Sure.

My point about regular students not being able to benefit from a compacted K-5 curriculum in two or three years comes from the fact that gifted student can move through academic material faster than a regular student. A regular student may be able to move faster than is currently being done, but not as fast as a gifted student.

> In any case, the "compacting" of the K-5 curriculum is just a hack. The real solution is to get rid of such constraints to begin with. That way, students who are "gifted" will naturally just go to the next level.

So ability grouping as opposed to age grouping? Yes, I agree it would help a lot, though as I'm sure you know, the gifted prefer to be around themselves rather than older regular children. Gross' book shows a trend that the more satisfied the kids are with their education, the better they do in life, which is why a separate school makes sense to me. The gifted population is small enough and funding is small enough that I think it will make a much greater positive impact on gifted students than a negative impact on regular students.

What will help gifted students and not regular students: faster curriculum, with less practice and review

So you put a regular student there. Pretty soon, they miss some key bit of understanding. Class doesn't pause and replay. Class moves on. Very quickly, the situation becomes hopeless. Why pay attention to calculus when you don't understand negative numbers or fractions? Why attempt Hamlet when you can't read words with more than one syllable?

>1. Accelerates income inequality (there's no way the gifted students on average will do poorer than the 'regular' students)

While this is probably true, (although not necessarily proven), the solution to income inequality is not to cripple those ahead, it's to bolster those from behind. Regression to the mean doesn't make a better education system.

>2. Remove equality of opportunity. That's not an argument against intellectual school segregation. Equal opportunity can be achieved by making the "gifted schools" easier to access for those who strive for it.

To your main point about how everything that benefits gifted students do benefit the entire system as a whole, I completely agree. However, the reality is that many of those features (smaller classes, better curriculum, practical education) don't scale to the population as a whole, and funding for education is limited. When there's a finite amount of resources to distribute, and the choice is between distributing to the children that are "gifted" or spread it around so thinly it might as well not have any effect at all, you bet your ass I'm going to vote for the former.

I won't address your second point, as the problem we'd then be discussing is completely different (i.e. we're now discussing resource allocation).

However, in regards to your first point: I said nothing about crippling those ahead. I'm curious what makes you say that honestly. Putting gifted students with "regular" students is not regression to the mean. Regression to the mean, would be putting gifted students in an environment where they wouldn't thrive. However, this said environment would also cripple regular students. So the solution, as I've said, and you agree with is to make education better, more generally.

> Putting gifted students with "regular" students is not regression to the mean.

How is it not? "Gifted" students are not given a chance to grow, since there's no pressure for them to excel in a school where they're already ahead. "Gifted" students aren't different from other children, they're responsive to the same social pressures all students face, and placing them with a "gifted" peer group allows them to thrive. Gifted students are among the most challenging for teachers to serve, as their needs lie outside the standard curriculum.

I don't understand your argument at all. It seems to hinge on some arbitrary obsession with gifted students. Your entire argument could be applied to at-risk students, who arguably need the help even more than gifted students and would see greater percentage gains as a result. Rather than discuss endlessly who should get what, we should rise the tide that raises all ships, no?

>"Gifted" students are not given a chance to grow, since there's no pressure for them to excel in a school...

"Regular" students are not given a chance to grow, since there's no pressure for them to excel in a school... I'll even humor you and apply this argument for "at risk" students. They, too, require pressure and engagement to excel. [1]

> Gifted students are among the most challenging for teachers to serve, as their needs lie outside the standard curriculum.

Indeed. Some gifted program curricula are simply minor modifications to standard ones, begging the question, why waste all of that money trying to barely change the curriculum? It would be better spent making school better in general. See my other sibling posts for citations.

[1] http://www.viriya.net/jabref/Academic_success_among_students...

Do you believe that it's feasible to improve schools holistically? Because I think that's the major disagreement between you and I. I think the idea we can one day improve schools as a whole, for every student, is a goal worth striving for, but I do not think it's realistic nor feasible in the current education system.

This problem of cooperative education (wherein we separate students with similar features) is well studied, for both "at-risk" and "gifted" students, and it's been show that regular classroom practices do not benefit either group [1].

[1]: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED379845.pdf

You may be misunderstanding the source you cited.

Here's some information that supports your argument...

> It is clear from the results that teachers in regular third and fourth grade classrooms make only minor modifications in the curriculum and their instruction to meet the needs of gifted students. (pg 125)

...however.

> 61% of the responding teachers have received no staff development in the area of gifted education (pg 125)

> gifted resource teachers have little effect on what classroom teachers do to meet the needs of the gifted (pg 127)

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In any case, your citation agrees with the holistic in practice.

> "...efforts must certainly must certainly include the selection or development of curriculum materials specifically design for classroom teacher use. They should also compact the regular curriculum, and to become more flexible in meeting the needs of all students, including gifted students." (pg 126)

P.S. I find this discussion to be enlightening and very productive, for me at least. Thanks for being a good conversation partner.

Also, yes, I do believe it's possible to improve schools holistically.

> Also, yes, I do believe it's possible to improve schools holistically.

Then I doubt I'll convince you through internet comments, but I think our goals are aligned (better education for all). However, we want to take different approaches to achieve it. The source I cited agrees that we should create an environment in which teachers are flexible, but my point in citing is that despite the comprehensive research that's been done on this topic, we've made very few steps towards actually accomplishing it, so I think it's time to give up that line of thought and try another, which is to separate students.

Separated schooling does have advantages, such as challenging gifted students ("A troubling finding that emerged was the preference of a few of the [gifted] students for heterogeneous classes because they were easier and enabled them to attain a high class ranking with little work")[1] and separation of children enable them to grow at a faster pace ("After 2 years, academically handicapped students in cooperative elementary schools had significantly higher achievement in reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, language expression, math computation, and math application in comparison with similar students in comparison schools") [2].

> P.S. I find this discussion to be enlightening and very productive, for me at least. Thanks for being a good conversation partner.

Likewise, thank you for being a good discussion partner as well.

[1]: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0016986204048001... [2]: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0002831203200232...

1. Who cares? This is not an argument for or against this. It's totally inappropriate to decide the best way to educate a child based on your personal theories about how wealth should be distributed, and your untested wild ass guess about what effect some educational policy would have on that theory.

2. You get better teachers and a stimulating environment that is challenging.

- Small classes: maybe, it's not necessary at all.

- better curriculum: well, yes, smarter kids can cover a topic more quickly and in more depth. The less smart kids can't keep up, so they have to skim less deeply and/or cover less material.

- more practical: ??? did you feel like you needed 3 bullets or something?

You should have separate schools because there aren't enough gifted kids in one regular school to even fill one class. This comes directly from the definition of gifted, if gifted is say the top 1% of students, a large high-school with 1500 kids would only have 15 of them across 4 grades. You have to do something like a magnet school to have enough kids at the same level in the same room for it to work at all.

I won't respond to the first point. If you're seriously asking "who cares" about income inequality then I don't think discourse will be productive.

In any case, you didn't seem to refute my main point that gifted schools would also benefit regular students.

What is there in your main point that needs "refuting"? Putting ordinary students in schools optimized for the gifted is no better than demolishing schools for special needs students and sending the children to regular schools regardless of the consequences.

In what way would it possibly benefit a typical student to be placed in a school where they can't keep up? How would it feel for that child to be in an environment where it's normal for their peers to take college courses before reaching high school age? In my experience, it's extremely demotivating and leads to a lot of pain for the child, no matter how wealthy his or her parents may be.

As justin_vanw pointed out (in an undeservedly flagged sibling post), it seems an awful lot like you deny the existence of gifted children to begin with.

Gifted kids flourish when other kids have interesting conversations with them instead of beating them up. If you know how to make that happen in a regular school, I'm all ears. But in my experience that's impossible and segregation is the only answer.

That's a completely different discussion and problem.

It does accelerate inequality. The answer is to make sure we are all equal.

To solve this problem, we should not allow the special Nike sports camps because I do not make as much as a basketball player as an NBA player. We need to equalize all opportunity at the lowest common denominator. Of course the US would never see another gold medal in the Olympics.

Gifted students do not require you to repeat the same things as often. By forcing them to go at the same pace as other students, you bore them and stunt their growth.

I don't think complete segregation is the answer, but within a given school, I believe there can be more malleability. In general, the idea of which class you end up in being more skill based than age based. And not everyone is better at every subject. Having it per subject allows someone to go further in math even if they struggle with some other subject.

I agree with you. See my comment from earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13472276

How can you argue pt.1 when the kids of high income parents already receive, at great expense but to great personal benefit, the kind of academically segregated education you are arguing against? How is a smart kid from Detroit or Camden supposed to catch up to his intellectual peer who is learning calculus while he/she is stuck in a school right out of Stand and Deliver? Without help one of them is going to Harvard and the other Community College, maybe, and quite frankly that is a waste of potential.

Sometimes the problem with education isn't the building, or the teachers, or the administration: it's the students (and by extension their parents) and if we can't fix them at least we can teach everyone according to their ability.

I can relate to the situations you describe, but they're not going to happen. The link we're all discussing is not talking about making these schools public, free or even accessible. It talks about, more generally, whether segregation should exist.

As for Detroit. Most of Michigan's "gifted" schools are private and NOT free [1] [2].

[1] http://migiftedchild.org/faq/#zero

[2] http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/sites/default/files/Nationa...

So you advocate mandatory public education? In fact mandatory boarding public education? -- I can think of no other way to avoid intellectual segregation as surely their are more 'gifted' children in Berkeley than Compton.

So much for the land of the free...

To the point: you are arguing that segregating students by capability increases income inequality - which is false to disingenuous over generations.

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