"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."
how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?
how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?
It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.
I think this idea that private schools are no better are even worse is a wishful thinking narrative. Private schools, especially the more expensive ones, naturally select for parents who are more involved. More involved parents are highly correlated with better student outcomes. That alone means private schools are correlated with better outcomes. It honestly doesn’t really matter if it’s cause and effect or correlation, parents send their kids to private schools because they want them in the mix with other students selected into the higher performing environment.
>The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant.
For math:
>The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score, corresponding to an effect size of .29. After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.)
In the context of the specific discussion here, it doesn't really matter that the effect goes away when controling for selected student characteristics. First off this was from 2006, we would have to see if any of that has changed. The 2024 numbers are here[1]. But in any case they are not worse than public schools, although they may be no better or slightly worse than a public school in a rich neighborhood or similar.
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.a...
[1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboa...
[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmb/public-school...
Your solution is to make the smart kids suffer so maybe they can force the educators to do better? That’s insane. It’s also not going to happen.
Do you know what will happen? Any parent with the means will scrape together cash to pull their students out and go to private schools. Or they’ll hire tutors after school and force their kids to sit down and learn what they should have been learning during the day.
This fantasy where the smart kids rally together to overhaul the system because we banned them from taking advanced classes is a delusion.
I was in a gifted program in grades 5-7, stopped going mainly because I had to travel to another school to attend and it was inconvenient.
I didn't "suffer" being in classes with folks who weren't at my level. The teaching staff did a great job and I never felt like I was being shortchanged. My undiagnosed ADHD means I goofed around a lot, but several of my friends told me after high school that they appreciated me because I helped them see learning from a different angle than their parents or the teachers.
However, please don’t force your experience to be the only allowable experience for others. If some students want to take advanced classes, we should let them.
Refusing to allow students to learn at a faster rate is insanity.
Teachers only really teach the middle third - the top third can be ignored because they can do it for themselves while being bored.
The bottom third can’t be helped because they won’t be helped without a huge amount of energy by the teacher (for little rewards), and so won’t do it for themselves while being bored.
The middle third is all that gets schooled because they can at least be bumped up a little higher towards where the under-achieving top third thus rests.
Gifted education programs for kindergarten. I don't necessarily agree with that either but it's important to be accurate when talking about proposed policies. The man isn't talking about taking away AP algebra. Most kindergarteners still need to be told not to eat their boogers.
Kindergarten is where the phase out starts. That’s how you phase something out. You don’t take it away from everyone all at once because that triggers outrage. You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on. He explicitly uses the phrase “phase out” for this reason.
Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website.
The “it’s just for kindergarten” is just positive spin on the first step of the goal of phasing it out in general.
Do you have links?
The phase out starts with kindergarten and “early grades”. In some places he’s said up through second grade which some assume is an upper limit, but really it’s just the natural length of phasing out gifted programs one year at a time over the 4-year course of a mayoral term due to the necessary delays to eliminate the program after his election date (kindergarten next school year, then 1st grade the next, then 2nd grade)
> You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on
I don't know how it works in NYC now, but it doesn't have to be like that. When I went to school you could always get into the gifted program at the beginning of any school year if your teacher put you up for it. You didn't have to be in the program since kindergarten.
Sorry, I should have been more clear.
The gifted program for kindergarten will be eliminated in the first year of the phaseout.
The following year it will also be eliminated for first grade.
The following year it will be eliminated for second grade as well.
This is the phase out. Students who start in kindergarten next year won’t have the option of the gifted program because it will be eliminated for the following grade every year.
It doesn’t matter that they didn’t get into it in Kindergarten because it won’t exist in 1st grade when they get there, and so on.
It’s not “ZDS”. It’s literally what he’s said.
Up to what grade though? The article you provided says Mamdani supports gifted programs starting in the 3rd grade. That's different from your original assertion that he's "[phasing out] gifted education programs", implying that they would end completely for everyone.
My original understanding was it was kindergarten only and that was inaccurate. He's following a plan proposed by de Blasio, which I didn't know about, that's phasing it out up to the 2nd grade. Extrapolating from that to "Mamdani will remove all gifted education" is the ZDS I'm referring to.
I agree with you overall about the value of gifted programs. But it's important to not spiral into hyperbole.
you're taking a leap to assume that this will lead to the abolishment of gifted programs in the higher grades (where such programs make more sense)
https://ncrge.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/982/2019/04...
Basically, non-gifted kids learn from the gifted ones. It's that whole, "positive influence from peers" thing.
In the long term, having gifted programs results in a handful of accelerated students and a lot more struggling ones (at the end of mandatory education).
In other words, let’s drag the smart students down, disallow them a better education, and instead force them to teach their peers because we don’t think their teachers are doing a good job?
This is a terrible way to solve a problem.
The students won’t get a chance to learn the advanced material by examining it to others because they won’t be allowed to learn the advanced material.
How do people not see the harms in banning advanced classes?
Kids usually don't learn "school" things like math, reading, and science from each other. They learn behaviors. Kindness, cooperation, competition, integrity, working hard, not being disruptive etc. Having a gifted track for part of the day doesn't disrupt that learning.
Allowing advanced students to learn advanced topics should be an easy decision for everyone. It’s so strange that it’s become a contentious topic.
And the variance can happen even in "top level" public schools, for certain definitions of "top level". I went to one of the best high schools in the nation (as rated by college acceptance rates, SAT/ACT scores, etc). There were still teachers people wanted to avoid because they were seen as harsher graders. So you can have grade inflation even at "top level" schools as private schools aren't above selling grades.