I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

Re:I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own P... by TallGuyShort on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @08:50AM (#19787418)

I think there's a right and a wrong way to run these programs. Some schools just pick a couple of outliers and make it obvious they're outliers. If you're going to group some kids by ability for some classes, do it to everyone. Yes, a few kids are really advanced. A few others are almost there. Don't make the first group so uniquely isolated at the expenses of making the second group miss out on similar opportunities entirely. I see the benefit of keeping everyone together some of the time, but I'm screaming inside when I see my daughter reading at a 3rd grade level next to kids who still don't know the alphabet, and her teacher has to keep them all in one big reading group. She has an alternative but it's strictly an addition to all her other work: which is how it was for me, so I got A's in the gifted program, and D's in my regular school work because it seemed pointless and stupid. My high school was only told about the D's so it took me 2 years to get back into Honors classes. Whoever designed that program was not gifted.

Let everyone spend some time grouped by ability. Don't just burden them with more busy work. And please make sure the teachers running special programs have a clue what they're doing to kids...

edit: Furthermore, I always thought it pathetic that I went from being a very average student in 2 other countries, moved to America and was suddenly seen as a gifted genius who was years ahead of my peers in math and science. I've obviously never seen it that way - I think kids are capable of for more than the American school system expects of them, but their intellectual growth is being stunted at a very young age.

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Re:I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own P... by pitaj on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @11:54AM (#19789063)

The right way to run a gifted program is to have class placement tied to ability, not to age. If someone is good at math, put them in the next higher math class. If someone is good at reading, bump them up. It works well for under-performing kids as well: if they fail math, they can retake just that class and continue in the rest.

This keep gifted kids challenged while not pushing anyone through too fast.

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Re:I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own P... by bluGill on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @10:10AM (#19788045)

There is one more thing that is important that most people miss: a "gifted" student (whatever that means) mixed in with the rest challenges the other students to do better.

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Re:I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own P... by bena on Tuesday April 30, 2019 @11:40AM (#19788918)

Do you support putting intellectually challenged students with the rest to encourage them to do better?

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Re:I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own P... by bluGill on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @09:09AM (#19796675)

That is a complex question that cannot be answered as a one size fits all. "intellectually challenged" can mean many different things. In some cases yes - it is good for the "smart" kids to learn to deal with the "stupid". In some cases no, the "stupid" just hold back the "smart". Note that this is all levels, the above average student sometimes needs to be at a lower level than the very smartest, and sometimes together.

There is a difference between subjects as well. I've been in choir with some "intellectually challenged" kids who had great voices: I was the one being challenged.

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Re:I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own P... by bena on Wednesday May 01, 2019 @03:16PM (#19800628)

I was looking for a kinder way to phrase it, but someone with an intellectual disability. Someone with an IQ in the range of 35 - 50.

You're trying to waffle. Have your cake and eat it too.

If you can recognize the fact that there are times when you're just holding back some students, then propping up a gifted student in a normal class to "inspire" the rest is doing a disservice to that gifted student.

We aren't talking about children who are simply "smart", we're talking about children who are so far beyond their peers, it's clearly noticeable. It's the opposite end of the bell curve. Because we're talking about children who are testing at 135 or above.

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