The Left’s War on Gifted Kids | Hacker News Reader

The Left’s War on Gifted Kids

theatlantic.com

52 pointsplank_time30 comments

Completely anecodatal story coming up.

When I was a kid my school had a "Gifted and Talented" program.

The "gifted" kids were selected based on performance on aptitude tests, then "talented" kids were appointed by the school board.

Every single "talented" kid had a teacher for a parent. That is not hyperbole.

I don't think it's deliberate, but I think this war against standardization is to further exclude outsiders.

GATE in California served no material purpose except to spend money and, most likely, inventory civilian human capital (the G part) for future national security recruitment.

At the time, I didn't understand why I was pulled out of class except to discover how quickly I could arrange triangles and be plopped in front of a piano like a just-add-water circus monkey expected to be an instant concert pianist with this one weird trick.

The war on merit is to make it all about victimhood. Forced busing also ruined public schools because more affluent parents pulled their kids put and put them in private schools, and the number of public schools decreased dramatically.

The essay is short and poorly written, even for David Frum. I live in Los Angeles and my second child just took the "gifted" exam last month, and my oldest is already in the program. I've heard no local talk about the gifted program disappearing, yet it is all the rage in national news. The Republicans took random examples from all over the country, put them all together, and manufactured yet another "crisis". Why? Because it is a winning strategy.

On the flip side, though, aren't you taking one data point (the school district your kids go to in Los Angeles) and extrapolating that, because it's not happening there, it's not really happening anywhere?

Not to jump on you but isn't the weight of the argument on the side that believes nothing is happening? If something is happening then it should occur something more then zero times and I think everyone agrees that that's the case. The question is how many occurrences greater then one is a problem. A better counter to would be to say it has happened 10 times but it hasn't happened in 10,000 such programs and there have been 500 new programs started in the last year.

Mind you I have no idea what the numbers are or should be on either side of this. I just think saying that you know of one instance where the program was not cancelled is not the best argument that there's nothing going on here.

So… doesn’t affect you so doesn’t matter?

Ignore the data points, I’m fine?

Yes, SATs may to some extent discriminate based on income (even though the effect is pretty small), but does the left they believe a more 'holistic' admissions system won't be gamed by rich parents, and thus is even more influenced by socioeconomic status? I think many on the left never wanted a meritocracy. They just want institutions that will give them and their children status that does not have to be earned.

If the holistic system was based on things like zip code and whether the school is elite or struggling then rich parents gaming the system by moving to poor neighborhoods or enrolling their kids in struggling schools seems like it might have some beneficial 2nd order effects.

It would be a pathological situation and I do not see how it could be beneficial short or long term. As a society we should make sure that the brightest people get appropriate knowledge and become as productive as possible, as it is in our interest. Smart people is one of the biggest resource the society has. It would be a waste not to use it to the fullest extent possible.

> As a society we should make sure that the brightest people get appropriate knowledge and become as productive as possible

Right, that's exactly why I believe we should factor in things like a student's school and zip code along with their standardized test scores, so that we can identify the bright kids who are otherwise being underutilized.

Using standardized test scores alone means kids with middling intelligence but lots of educational resources will edge out brighter kids without those resources. Plus a kid with a lot of educational resources at their disposal will probably be fine either way, so identifying and advancing underutilized kids will likely yield a higher ROI.

I am convinced that the standardized test should be the main or sole factor. Taking into account environmental variables is going to be overly arbitrary and likely to turn political and corrupt leading to worse results on average. If the test is designed well and puts emphasis on measuring IQ then the difference in ed resources should not skew the results too much.

If there existed a stand-alone test that could measure intelligence I would agree with you. But current standardized tests like the SAT and GRE measure a combination of intelligence, time spent studying, and money spent on educational resources like test prep tutors + materials.

Taking into account environmental variables is just an attempt to statistically control for the third variable and make the test more accurate at measuring intelligence.

I definitely think NYC is overcompensating by tossing testing entirely, and that's bad. But relying on raw scores is no less arbitrary or political than composite scores that attempt to control for confounding variables.

With respect to considering multiple factors, most elite colleges and universities already do that. For example, in the admissions processes I've been directly involved with the test scores had to meet certain thresholds depending on the program the candidate was applying to, but beyond that the reviewers focused on other factors. I mean if someone who didn't go to an elite high school got a stellar score then one of the reviewers would probably note it in the report, but otherwise it just wasn't a major factor in deciding who to admit.

This is a pretty argument if you can even call it that. He's basically saying that anti-testing policy isn't popular. There's no substantive argument. It sounds like one of his kids missed admission to a preferred school and now he's whining in The Atlantic.

It's a sucky predicament to just ask schools to solve discrimination. And, more to his point, to ask white parents to potentially sacrifice their own kids' education for the good of the many. I think school admissions are the culmination of so many other societal errors. We wouldn't have such a fight over school admissions if our schools weren't so unequal. And our schools wouldn't be so unequal if our housing wasn't so unequal. Stopping testing-based admissions is like throwing a monkey wrench into an injustice machine.

I did admissions when I was teaching years ago, and I found standardized test scores helpful in ensuring a minimum baseline level of proficiency. I think the drive to ignore them entirely is misguided and will result in admitting students who lack the prerequisites necessary to succeed in the magnet schools.

Having said that, I'm glad to see schools moving away from using tests as the primary metric. I think balancing standardized scores with things like a student's ranking in their school gives a higher-resolution image.

For example, take two students with similar test scores -- one at the top of their class in a struggling school and another in the middle of the pack at an elite school. The former is likely a more capable student given that they were able to earn a similar test score with fewer resources.

The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a struggling school or merging school districts to incorporate struggling schools, and it seems like that might have some positive impacts.

>>The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a struggling school or merging school districts to incorporate struggling schools, and it seems like that might have some positive impacts.

That was a similar argument for indiscriminate school bussing, and if anything those formerly big-fish-in-a-small-pond students , past a certain age like 7 or 8, were more likely to fail in their more rigorous environment. This "reverse bussing" solution you've suggested could just result in the educational equivalent of gentrification or could push people to invent their way out public schooling entirely. And with the pandemic, the public school system had further undermined itself. As edutech and homeschooling platforms are become the next evolution in learning. Students won't be required to participate in struggling schools as that's not the only option left to them anymore. They can have their education a la carte. In addition to this, merging school districts isn't usually a move made for educational advancement. It's a move made for federal dollars or latent cost-cutting. And where there's one form of cost-cutting, there are bound to be others that slowly compromise student education starting with the education of the brightest. Parents who can afford charters or private school rarely deal with the shenanigans of politics or the sociological experiments that come with public education.

What the heck kind of article is this? I read the first few paragraphs and then quit. Why would people not getting arrested in chicago last summer be blamed on other people saying “defund the police.”? No police were defunded in chicago last summer as far as I know. Shouldn’t that actually be evidence that the CPD aren’t very good, especially at that funding level?

it is pretty disorganized.. Jumps between talking about defund the police, New York City politics, immigration, Trump, education, etc.

It's typical The Atlantic. Somehow there is an audience for this stuff; I suppose it's mostly shared by people who read the title and find it supports their views.

Definitely an opinion piece.

Let's just gloss over the "defund the police" comparison, those are just bait.

Grades-based selection for high school seems crazy to me, it perpetuates problems with stratifying K-12 based on the socio-economic status of the neighbourhood. Parents are going to chase the schools with the best standing. Those with the means would do anything to boost the kids grades, including extra-curriculars. Those who don't have the means langish.

We see that all the time in places like HK.

Evaluating teachers based on weak proxies such as student grades are disasters. Weapons of Math Destruction has a whole chapter on it, and she'd explain it far better than I can.

I'm not opposed to grade-wide testing, as a data point to assist with the curriculum. But this articles doesn't even try to piece together a coherent point...

The feckless GWB destroyed American education with the disaster that was NCLBA. Too much teaching to testing, and too many worthless teacher KPIs.

It makes me want to move to Finland or Singapore.

No you don't want to move to Singapore for that.

In some places, gifted programs have become secret. It is no longer something a parent’s children can petition to enter.

Which "some places?"

Secret how?

Is this a conspiracy theory?

Anecdotal, but my child was just invited into a gifted STEM program in suburban Chicago public schools. She was advised not to tell other students about it, pretending her normal math/science periods were on-campus. I don’t think that will work long-term.

Our district has a bazillion expensive programs for kids on the “left side of the curve” but there is so little funding for gifted kids they are forced to keep it on the down-low. Apparently in the past parents have stormed the school board meetings demanding their kid be admitted, threaten to sue for “unequal treatment”, etc.

Similar experience here. I won't go into details, but the gifted programs have moved into covert operations at this point.

Before anyone gets too excited by the headline, this is by David Frum, so it's a conclusion in search of a thesis.

Where is he on the axis of evil?

Are we talking Lawrence Wilkerson, Rand Paul, Trump, Peter Hitchens, George Will, or Bill O'Reilly?

Frum is one of those "good" conservatives, at least making a stab at being reasonable rather than giving in to the paranoia and conspiracy thinking that have overtaken much of your list.

Of the ones on your list that I recognize, he's closest to George Will. A quick google suggests that he may be like Wilkerson. I wasn't able to learn anything useful about Peter Hitchens.

He's actually the guy who coined the term "axis of evil". So I'm not sure if you're making a joke or if it's just a coincidence.

RationalWiki has a rather amusing, somewhat satirical take on him:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/David_Frum

Is it just me or is this page impossible to scroll on mobile? Safari/iOS.

I'm beginning to think that when I have children, if the current trajectory continues, exit from this procrustean bed is going to be the ethical thing to do with them.

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