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Comment by jltsiren | Hacker News Reader

I don't have much experience with how education works in California, or in the US in general. But there is one universal issue with special programs for gifted kids: parents. It's hard to distinguish gifted kids from average kids with ambitious parents. If you let ambitious parents push their kids to programs they are not qualified for, they can easily ruin the programs for the actual gifted kids.

Gifted programs work best when people don't consider them prestigious or think that they will improve the life outcomes for the participants. When they are more about individual interests than status and objective gains.

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Naming the programs gifted and creating a gifted identity is the core issue. Instead, call it something like asynchronous development, and place kids in classes appropriate to their pace of development.

I'm hopeful that AI can offer highly individualized education to each kid, and get around this issue entirely.

> Instead, call it something like asynchronous development

"Differently abled" works just fine both ways, that there is stigma attached to the title helps since it means parents wont push for it for no reason.

The problem with changing the terminology is that people/kids are clever enough to turn it to a diss regardless. It's only a matter of time.

Anyways, I don't see the big deal. I was too dumb to make it into gifted classes in school but it's not like that stopped me from going to college. I just went to a lesser college. Still make good money

In Ontario, access to these programs was gated by an IQ test given to all students based on the outcome of a standardized test (this was ~30 years ago, no idea what they do today). I'm not saying it was perfectly objective or equitable but it was a start at trying to make it objective. Are programs not doing something similar in California or elsewhere in the US?

Yep - I remember the CCAT from 4th grade that resulted in my being placed into a different class for 5th. AFAIK, we were given this test "cold" (no prep) and I remember it being timed.

It’s literally illegal to give students IQ tests in California.

The solution is to make gift classes fluid. That is, the worst performing kids leave the program every year, while the best kids outside the program move in. Parents can only push so much, but they can't change talent distribution.

What about the kids who thrive when their parents push hard enough? Well, in that case the kids are indeed talented, no? If the US people are inspired by seeing the street of LA at 4:00am or by some NBA dude practices free throw 4000 times a day, then we've got to admit that toiling also works and should be admired in academic training.

Stack ranking kids sounds terrible.

Strict ranking is indeed terrible. A threshold makes sense, though. If a kid can't keep up with the demand of the gift program, the kid should seek a more suitable program.

Is it the kids who are chosen that make a program "work best", or the teachers and curriculum? Why not let anybody who wants to try it, try it?

I don't know; the overly-ambitious parents push has been working out pretty well as evidenced by the Asian community in the US.

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