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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

This "single standard" to me is like outlawing adjustable seats in cars.

In the UK, they start separating students into separate tracks around 8th grade. Some will excel in math and science, so give them the opportunity to really go for it and take hard classes. Others will excel in other areas.

But if everyone is lumped together in the same bucket and forced into the same mold, the average student's highest level of achievement across all subjects goes significantly down.

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We used to have an accelerated/gifted track in US to take more advanced courses. One got evaluated around 7th grade to make that decision. The difference in skill level was huge because the final year I took it easy and did the regular courses and it was basically a cakewalk.

There is no single US. Each state has it own program to separate students into different tracks. In mine they identified "talented kids" in 3rd grade and they have advanced math and language programs going forward. They had additional evaluations in middle and high schools. So it wasn't like all doors are closed after the 3rd grade.

Regular public schools in a pretty big district that combines both urban and suburban schools.

Get labelled incorrectly in grade 8 and get shutout of any advanced math/science classes which disqualifies you from a good university program.

Could be worse… could be the (pre-1976) Eleven-Plus Exam…

In the South East they still do the 11+.

Agreed, that would suck. Maybe allow retesting in the following grade if the student feels they've been mislabeled?

But isn’t it unfair to saddle minorities with more generational debt by getting them to attend universities? I’m being snarky here but also legitimately asking. My student loan payments resume in a month because Biden doesn’t care about non-Boomers.

And you know this because you've seen it happen? In NL, pre-selection happens at 12 years but actual specialisation doesn't happen until 15 years old. That's three years for children to switch tracks, try things and see what works best for them. And even then, students can pursue an upgrade track after graduation that would still grant them access to university at the cost of an extra year of secondary schooling (which also gives them an extra year of maturity, which often also helps).

I don't know how it is in the UK, but your comment strikes me as a typical boogieman from someone who hasn't actually seen the system in action.

Yes, this happens. My son could not take calculus in high school because he was mislabeled in 8th grade. The 8th-grade decision has had an impact on his college career.

The school system has as a track of classes leading up to calculus. A student can jump forward on the track by passing a test on the next class in the track.

Because there were other demands on my son's time, it was not practical for him to learn a year's worth of material outside of school time.

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