> I just searched for effects of tracking on high performing students.
What are the first results you get? I get an article on "engagement" (which is not really the subject), then a study that conclude "The results suggest that early tracking increases educational inequality. While less clear, there is also a tendency for early tracking to reduce mean performance." (aka dragging everyone to the bottom)
I find it surprising that you've only found studies that show tracking to be beneficial.
> Also the meta-analysis you posted basically just says that a bunch of these studies have methodological flaws and don't really show anything.
And those are not accounted in the conclusion that is still that mixed classroom is preferred over non-mixed ones.
> And again, you have to use logic here. If you don't teach kids, but still take up their time not teaching them, how are they going to learn things?
That's a fallacy. Mixing classroom is not equal to "not teaching them". Again, you said yourself that a good fraction of the class is high performance kids. 20% is a big fraction, it's 5 students over 20. You decide to frame the situation as if a good fraction was just 100% ignored, which is just you framing the situation so the conclusion is what you want to hear.
> The position you're putting forward is absurd. Literally illogical. Cannot happen.
Reality does not care about your feelings. The reality is what we measure when we measure the facts. This is what these studies have done. They have concluded that your naive logic is incorrect: they have measured that non-mixed classroom does not mean high performance students stop learning.
> ... and I think you'll find I said that I think the smart kids would thrive if you just put them in a room with each other with some educational toys/games, and maybe gave them about a half hour of instruction per day.
And this is probably exactly why mixed classroom don't damage high performing students. You are adamant to pretend that in a classroom of 20% of high performance students, the teachers will lock them in a dark room or only tell them exactly what they are telling the low performing students. But then you also explain that it is easy, just gave them stuffs to do and leave them alone. What you are saying is that basically you can easily care for a high performance student when they are in a mixed classroom.
> The original context was about people having exactly the weird visceral reaction to tracking (or "discrimination" or segregation) that you display.
Which "weird visceral reaction"? You said that non-mixed classrooms are an obvious good solution. This is a lie, this is incorrect. Even being generous and saying that "non-mixed may be a good solution", your affirmation was that "non-mixed wins with a clear margin, it is an _obvious_ solution, and people who are not convinced by it have no legitimacy for this position at all". I don't care about "discrimination", I don't care about "stopping your kid to get smart".
Again, if I'm wrong, it would be SUPER EASY for you: articles like the ones I've provided should simply not exist. If I'm wrong, those articles are IMPOSSIBLE. If indeed non-mixed classrooms are the obvious solution you pretend it to be, every single study should either say "too large uncertainty to conclude anything" or "clear benefice from non-mixed classrooms". The fact that there are studies that say "statistically significant no benefice from non-mixed classrooms" is just the reality telling you that "it's an obvious solution" is not true.
> The fact that you think it's unfulfilling to learn at the pace you're capable of instead of being made to artificially sit and wait is more of a statement about you.
How being in a mixed classroom suddenly stop your kid to learn at the pace she like? YOU SAID IT YOURSELF that she needs half-hour a day of attention per day for this to be satisfied.
This sentence was there where you went all crazy about "those devil people who want to force my smart kid to not be smart" or "those devil people who want all children to be the same, for some reason that no one knows". WHY? WHO IS DOING THAT? You seems to think that people cares about your kid learning or not, and try to stop her learning. That's why I pictured you as obsessed with competition: you assume that kid education is somehow a competition (otherwise there is no reason at all for other people to try to stop your kid to learn).
> And, yes, my kid is an outlier, as are these other kids I'm talking about.
I meant: your kid is an outlier amongst the high performance kids. No kid is the same. No high performance kid is the same. Some will need half-hour a day, some will need five hours. Some will to work out the problem by themselves, some will need guidance. Some will need to learn continuously on a long period of time, some will need scheduled short sessions with big pause in between.
And you may have talked to tens of parents. 1. that is still a ridiculous small sample to drive any conclusion. 2. based on this conversation (for example how you find reason to convince yourself that your kid is in reality smarter than other kids), I'm pretty sure you heard what you wanted to hear from these parents.
> Did you miss the part where ... Do you understand what ...
Calm down, there. I was talking about your kid being an outlier amongst the group of high performing kids. You keep coming up with "my kid don't need more resource, so if someone says HP need more resource, they are lying", "my kid was fine with half-hour of teaching, so that is what a HP kid needs", ... And again, I'm sure you will say that you have discussed that with tens of other parents. Again, tens of parents is NOTHING. It's ANECTODICAL.
But, hey, thanks for showing your true colour: I was talking of your kid being an outlier amongst the HP kids, but you did not hesitate one second to come at me blaming me for something that I did not do at all.
> The school knows this, and doesn't attempt to accommodate it.
It may be the case, but there are a lot of as equally probable hypothesis.
For example: Your kid is used to homeschooling and struggle to adapt to a classroom. Because you cannot conceive that the problem is not the result to your imaginary "bad people who, for reason no one can explain, want to stop children learn", you just jumped to the conclusion "they don't accommodate it, I'm so much smarter than them, let me come with a genius idea". Then, you met the teachers and proposed ideas that people who have tried noticed will not work, and you got angry when they politely discarded them (instead of thinking that maybe they know things you don't, you just assumed you are so much better than them). Then, you talked to other parents, some of them in the same crazy state as you, some of them indulging you, some of them probably trying to balance your position but you did only hear what suits you.
All of that fits very well all the data points. Way more that the hypothesis that, despite the fact that your kid is so easy to teach for and that it will benefit mainly to all the other kids, somehow people refused your idea.