My mother is the director of gifted education in a major midwestern city's public school district. She doesn't believe in evolution.<p>There are quotas for minorities. Many otherwise qualified students are denied acceptance because their places are reserved. And not just a few... many.<p>Logistically, kids need to be bused from other schools, but transportation is uncooperative and the schools resent the hassle. There is also an additional bureaucratic and testing cost. These costs are in addition to running the programs themselves, but _these_ costs specifically antagonize other political entities in the school district.<p>And of course... unlike special ed, teachers resent busing away their best students. They fight over dumping the worst, of course.<p>Politically (within the district) gifted education is a career for pariahs. They create hassle for the "normal" (aka "real") teachers and they have no power to deter neglect or abuse. The teachers and staff in the department are paid less than require more education than "real" teachers. This drives away the best teaching talent and firmly entrenches the some least ambitious teachers within the department. <p>The curriculum is a petri dish of all sorts of inane pet political agendas. Especially in science and math, the teachers don't know the subjects themselves, so these subjects simply aren't taught beyond a pre-packaged lesson plan.<p>The consequence: the most qualified students leave the district (if they can.) Instead of integration, communities become more and more segregated. Fact is, if you don't "segregate" special resources for the best within a community, the best will leave. School districts only have incentives to reduce segregation with their local district. But segregation is inevitable, and failing to deal with it merely bubbles the segregation to higher levels.<p>Hence, I'm writing this from Silicon Valley and not the midwest.<p><i>Update</i><p>So nerd education is the nerd of education. <p>If you were a nerd in school, and you remember how _you_ were treated, doesn't that seem like a plausible extrapolation?
I'm embroiled in parts of this debate with myself. By most measures, I'd be identified as a smart person. Perhaps even "really, really" smart. But back in the 4th or 5th grade, I wasn't selected as "gifted".<p>The practical upshot is that instead of going to a different school and being surrounded by teachers who were in tune with my needs, I stumbled through a public suburban high school replete with all the drama that Judd Apatow can fit onto the screen.<p>I consider this a very lucky occurence.<p>Why? Because it forced me to keep <i>myself</i> occupied rather than expecting anyone else to do so. It freed me from a mindset of educational entitlement.<p>By spending this years in a regular school, I was able to learn take on a host of other activities that I found interesting at my own pace and at my own behest. My intellectual development and curiosity drove me forward.<p>And it forced me to learn how to navigate elements of the "real world" that end up being speedbumps along the way. <i>Isolation from that is a mistake.</i> I've many friends who've learned that the hard way.<p>Now I'm a happy adult with a precocious son. I'm getting worried about his teachers in kindergarten are going to deal with a child who happily decides if numbers are primes and points out square roots.<p>How do I teach him to learn for himself. To realize that his school gives him a starting point for his education, and not the entireity. To help him end become a ferociously curious individual who gets stuff done, not in some isolation chamber gifted bubble, but in the real world -- omplete with alliances and politics and emotions and conflicts.<p>It's hard. It was hard to live through as the student, and I expect it to be hard for me to live through as his guide.<p>But it is absolutely the right place to end up.
Isn't it obvious that the answer is yes? No disrespect to the many people who have Down's or other syndromes, as many of them are wonderful human beings; but the current attitude is that they would rather spend $100K on special assistants so that little Danny can be taught to use the bathroom by himself by the time he is 14, rather than spend that same money encouraging 100 smart kids.
"And for reasons that no one understands, African Americans' IQ scores have tended to cluster about a standard deviation below the average--evidence for some that the tests themselves are biased."<p><i>sniff sniff</i><p>Like evidence "for some" that the tests work when you like the results ---but don't when you don't?
All these smart kids should just do startups, get rich, and skip school entirely, provided they can learn the basics themselves, and their social lives aren't too screwed up by this. If college students can start companies, why not brilliant high school and jr. high students?
So Time thinks that not letting an already arrogant kid skip two grades is "failing" her. <p>The most important thing for a school age kid is to become well-socialized. <p>The correlation between skipping grades and turning out well is just a correlation - it may be that those who were not allowed to skip were so messed up socially already that they were less likely to convince their schools to let them skip grades. In contrast, if you're well-adjusted and smart, it's more likely that you'd be able to convince school administrators to allow you to skip a grade. And, of course, Time misses that distinction, making it into a clear case of "the more grades skipped the better."
One aspect that bothers me about the educational system is the educational system's education for educator's. Educational "theories" seem to follow fads that wax and wane in popularity every decade or so. (Reminiscent of the latest "Quality System" fad: the nuts and bolts remain the same but they are arranged differently.) One would think that educational techniques would converge over time rather than bouncing around. An educational degree strikes me as largely a waste more suited to a minor.
Reason's for public education:<p>1. An educated citizenry is critical for a functioning democracy.<p>2. An educated citizenry is critical to the economy of a nation.<p>
Ironically, one of the ways to "fail" a genius is to label her so:<p>"The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids"
<a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/" rel="nofollow">http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/</a><p>But, you also can't hide from someone that they're not being challenged by the same academic work as their age-peers, so you'd better be ready with some special challenges for them.