Stuy was a different world, and the first time in my life I felt the opportunity to actually just learn, and not have to hide my report card or test scores as soon as I got them, because doing "too well" meant a beatdown after school.
2/3 of my MIT admission essays were about this experience, incidentally.
[edit 1] Aside: one additional anecdote is that I was constantly getting in trouble before Stuy; I was always bored, because the work was easy, and nobody ever gave me additional work to do, so I would talk to the other kids. I was always an extrovert, and very bad at being bored; I could not sit in one place and just stare at the wall, or pretend to listen to a teacher drone on about some geometry thing I already knew. So I got in trouble constantly for distracting the other kids. That stopped in Stuy, because I wasn't bored; I was challenged.
[edit 2] The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn't want to get in trouble. It was dumb.
Not saying my country school system is perfect, it isn't. And there are cases of abuse, bullying does exist. But 30 years ago I was the good, shy, student in a poor neighbourhood of a big city and never suffered or witnessed anything too bad (and from 4 to 12 year old we had a kid with Down syndrome in our class). And nobody would even think about splitting kids by ability, we don't have "advanced"/"honours" classes.
That split might not happen until age 18, but my wager is that it does happen everywhere. The question is when is the optimal time? I tend to think earlier rather than later.
What right do we have to impose these impacts on children? Or is the school tracking a form of trolley problem where it feels wrong to some to take an active choice?
Because you asked the direct question, I'll give a direct answer. "How early is earlier?" Based on an N of 5 (myself, my two siblings, and my two kids), I think it can be done productively as early as 3rd grade or so. (For me, it was done earlier than that [age 5], which I'm extremely happy about, but I'm not sure that's scalable or even typically appropriate.)
I do think that a periodic re-assessment is also appropriate. If someone "runs well" in 3rd grade and then reverts to the mean, they should revert to the mean academic leveling as well. If someone develops late and starts to excel in 7th grade, there should be a way for them to pivot towards the advanced classes then as well.
I was not allowed into the gifted and talented program in my school because I had a lot of trouble with reading when I was young. However, I was probably the most gifted person in mathematics. But the G&T program was only for people who scored high on both.
So what happened? I was stuck in the average kids where I excelled but was bored. Anytime math was being worked, I was sent to the computer lab to play on the Apple IIes.
I eventually caught up from a reading perspective but the damage was already done. The american school systems aren't prepped to manage anything out of the ordinary. So since I wasn't in the gifted program, I didn't have the accelerated math during elementary school. Therefore, I couldn't start algebra as early. That means through out high school I was bored stupid. All because of what happened when I was 7 years old.
They made a decision on a 7 year olds ability.
Did it change my life for the worse? Probably not. Unintended consequences and all. I got super interested in computers since I was stuck in a computer lab all the time. I excelled in math in college. Majored in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics.
BUT just because it worked out doesn't mean they didn't fuck up.
Now I have children. My oldest son ALSO did not qualify for G&T program. Can you guess why? He struggled with reading in early elementary school(we tried to help but sorry, people develop at different rates). Oh my gosh but he is good in math. The difference now is there is no escape for him like I had. He is stuck being bored in class.
My youngest son is adopted so we don't have much insight on family history from an academic standpoint but he is killing it in all aspects of school. He likely will be in the G&T program. Yet, I don't believe he is superior in intellect compared to my oldest. They have different skillsets.
So yeah, I think doing G&T determination in elementary school is pretty dang stupid. That crap will all fall into place naturally in middle school.
It is a system based on laziness and testing to the tests.
My wife volunteered a lot for the school and as a result she knew all the administration. She was able to get our preferred teacher each year etc. Get to know the teachers and administration, help them out. They can bend any rule at any time.
We are in private school now. In my son's 1st grade class (mostly 7 year olds), there is a kid who just turned 5. Private school could be a good option.
Public schools even within the same school system can be different, so dont generalize across the entire public school system.
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/public-sch...
> Wonder what allows a school to at least consider permanent expulsion? The student has to be convicted of:
> murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon
> But expulsion can be permanent if and only if he or she is over 16 or older. And of course, forget all those criteria for the disability manifestation exclusion–if the student was convicted but disability is the reason for the behavior, no action can be taken.
And any kind of discipline or moving them to special classes or special schools leads to being sued.
Education is not the first or second priority in the school system or things would look quite different.
The point is that students who are not engaged themselves, and whose parents are not engaged enough to ensure that they go, will no longer make school less valuable for all by their very presence.
Industrialization was raising pollution and standards of living and making it clear that a lack of education wasn't a healthy option - although partially driven by wrong reasons - paranoid anticatholicism that ignores basically all of European history of how much influence the church /actually/ has over secular power.
Even post WW2 industrialization the population was still at a high school diploma as an actual advantage but "optional".
We need more informed not less. Problematically the populace also needs more critical thinking and self guidance while there are many unhealthy attitudes towards learning.
Often they do try to put their bullshit in it but their hamhandedness in practice often backfires by adolescence - especially with their own twisted priorities and misrule related discontent.
And I argue this as an education system skeptic and college dropout myself.
And calculators have rendered arithmetic unnecessary for some time. The focus should be on how to use calculation for financial and technical purposes.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/4/5/17199810/school-disc...
Where do you think all of the funding and resources go when you do that?
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/public-sch...
> Wonder what allows a school to at least consider permanent expulsion? The student has to be convicted of:
> murder drug dealing aggravated assault rape possession of a deadly weapon
> But expulsion can be permanent if and only if he or she is over 16 or older. And of course, forget all those criteria for the disability manifestation exclusion–if the student was convicted but disability is the reason for the behavior, no action can be taken.
That is irrelevant.
This is done, to some extent, via auxillary schools in many affluent areas. If a student is problematic in any myriad of ways, off they are sent to the school with lower standards (often within sight of the other campus). For example, 1994 presidential blue ribbon Brea HS has the Canyon high school meters from its campus, specifically for this purpose.
Without punctuation, this sounds like a ridiculously specific and esoteric crime.
Can't we fix bullying in the first place ?
I want to echo this. I too was bullied like crazy (I was ridiculed/outcast for being "gay", in the homosexual sense, except I was completely straight. But that doesn't particularly matter to middle-schoolers. I was ridiculed for the clothing I wore (it fit funny as I grew in spurts) and was physically beat, too.)
Our local schools had some advanced schools ("tracked", as the article calls it); I applied. In my system, if you met the entrance requirements, your fate was tossed into a lottery. For one particular school, ~100 students were accepted from ~600 applicants. I was 500th on the waitlist for that school. (It was the worst of several.) I spent an extra year in my assigned school because of that, and it was hell. It was a gift from God when I got out of there the next year. (I got off one of the wait lists!)
It took ten years to really work through most of the resulting depression and confidence issues my time at my assigned school left me with. I have no idea if I would have succeeded if not for "tracked" education.
The author is wrong on several points:
> Eight Bay Area school districts found similar results when they de-tracked middle-school mathematics and provided professional development to teachers.
Perhaps it was the professional development, and not the de-tracking that led to better results? The link doesn't seem to support the author's conclusion, either, and largely seems to credit the professional development.
> [other remarked about "fixed-ability"] We are at a point where the negative impacts of fixed-ability thinking are undeniable.
I have never heard of "fixed-ability", and at least where I was, it was never the argument for separating out achieving students. The arguments was not that the lower-performing students weren't capable¹ of performing, it just simply that if you taught at their level, you were wasting the potential and the time of the students who were outperforming their peers, as you would have to teach significantly below their ability, which is inevitable when you cater to the lowest common denominator.
> When students, instead, embrace the knowledge that there are no limits to their learning, outcomes improve. When students develop a “limitless perspective” positive changes go through their lives,
And the bullies I was schooled along side with joined hands with the bullied and sang kumbaya. (/s) This is absurd.
> International studies show that the United States is one of the most tracked education systems in the world, but tracking hasn’t led to high achievement for the country.
Tracking is a symptom of people trying to escape the poor baseline education; it is not the cause of the poor baseline education, and eliminating it will not improve that.
> Instead, it has brought about stark racial divisions in opportunity and achievement.
Ah, now it's racist to want to receive an at level education? This argument was bantered around in my school system, and it never made any sense. Some combination of socio-economic standing and what generation you were mattered a whole lot more. (Those with good socioeconomic standing either moved out of system, or enrolled in private schools. First-generation kids — with the exception of the Hispanic community for whatever reasons — seemed to do considerably for whatever reasons. Our "tracked" schools were overrepresented in Asian and (I believe, but these demographics aren't measured) first-generation African-Americans, and under-represented in Hispanic and all other African Americans … and it only ever seemed to me that it was that last one that bothered people.
> Now is the time to invest in the teacher professional development that allows this to happen.
Sure, but this is orthogonal to eliminating tracked education. Add in that every government I've seen seems awfully reluctant to pay the teachers. (And you are paying them for the time they'll need to do this, right?)
> For when we tell students they can reach the sky, and provide them with opportunities to do so, amazing things happen.
This was as patronizing then as it is now.
I can't understand why someone is so eager to shut down the only thing that gave me a future.
¹many of them lacked discipline. They were poorly behaved children, and it's a miracle the teachers wanted to continue to be there at all, IMO. Many of them were clearly not getting discipline taught at home … and teachers are forbidden nowadays from imposing any meaningful discipline themselves.
> The other corollary to this, of course, is that on the last day of JHS, after having held my reactions entirely for nearly a decade, and just taking the beatings...I finally lost it. It was really bad, and on the last day of JHS I went absolutely apeshit on this kid for pushing me around and punching me, after I gave him three warnings. Easily one of the top 3 least proud moments of my life. That could have been avoided, too, though you could make an argument a large part of that was also due to it being taboo to actually talk to someone about your feelings in the 90s. I never wanted to fight back because I was afraid of hurting them (I had been training in martial arts for like 7-8 years) and because I didn't want to get in trouble. It was dumb.
On one of my final days prior to transferring out, I almost lost it on another kid. I think my body language threatened violence, and I think it scared him a bit because I'd never done that. We both still ended up getting dragged to the principal's office, though as I remember I wasn't punished. Today, I regret not actually exacting violence on him. Which runs incredibly contrary to most of what I think my own morals are. But do you just keep trying to fend off the incoming violence forever, or at some point take a stand that might actually make a difference? (It wouldn't be until much later that I read Ender's Game, which argues this very point.) (Or who knows, his friends might have come rushing to his aid, and it would not have been a fair fight at that point.) It was dumb.
For me, being separated from the bullies made all the difference in the world. And it wasn't separation as in "hang around only with other smart kids" - my charter school was academically worse than the public school that I left behind, and like I said, I hung around with the stoners, rockers, and drop-outs. But the charter school focused explicitly on building community and accepting people for who they were. In short, it made it a point to address the emotional needs of teenagers that so many public institutions conveniently forget about. That made all the difference in the world.
For you - if you can muster the money or get insurance to pay for it, I'd highly recommend seeing a therapist that works with trauma. This stuff sticks with you a long time, but it doesn't have to define your life.
There's nothing to really help people who've already experienced it, but seeing the numbers somehow really helped to put it in perspective for me.
It's kind of an epidemic at this point.
Which tallies with my own experience, in the UK there's secondary school and college (AKA sixth form) before university, which basically means the last two years of high school are separate from the first 5, you go to a different school (sometimes, some places have both on the same campus). And I made the choice to go to a college further out of my way that added 10 hours of cycling onto my commute every week pretty much so I'd never have to speak to anyone from my secondary again, the new place was just another college, no special grade requirements, but not being around the same people and being able to basically "reset" made my life so much better that I can't really argue that never separating kids is a good option.
In my case, I still got bundled in with the "high achievers" in the IB honors program in HS, but it wasn't any better for self-esteem. The kids in that program weren't genuinely smarter or nicer for the most part - they just had parents who were wealthier and able to afford tutors/extra-curriculars plus stable home environments. The teachers in that program were incredibly unaccommodating to disabilities and there was a sickening elitism that the IB kids has towards everyone not in IB. The "normal" kids weren't the ones making me miserable, it was my peers.
I eventually couldn't take existing in that state, and the toll it all took on my mental health came to it's reasonable conclusion in the form of self-directed violence. Eventually transferred schools. Almost dropped out, but found a loophole that let me take some community college classes for credit and graduate a semester early, so I still got through.
Took me a long time to get perspective on all that. My only long-term friends I still have today from HS were from electives - they were skipping class and smoking up in HS. I never considered that option for myself (did no drugs at all back then), since I wasn't really interested in "coping" so much as getting out. But still, I don't think being separated helped at all. Sure I passed every test, but I was socially out of my depth the entire time. Just being surrounded by other young people in general can be a recipe for misery for people who can't fit in. I'd like to think online school would have been better, but not sure if being completely isolated would have just messed me up more in the long run.
Edit: left out a key word, "physical" bullying. There was definitely tons of the other sort.
Interestingly, people actually graduate from these schools and sometimes go to college afterwards.
I think it's a better system - why make the victim switch schools when obviously they aren't the problem here?
Bullying and peer pressure cause serious harm, not just emotionally but economically when good kids drop out of society. These harms would be magnified if kids who don't fit in with the crowd had even fewer options to escape.
The idea isn't to just get rid of private schools, but to take money that goes into that and finance better public education (which can still include ways for people to move around if needed!)
Having a separate world for the rich means that kids who "don't fit in with the crowd" but don't have wealthy parents won't have any way out.
In an alternate world where more money is invested in the public system, having wealth would no longer be a necessary requirement for having access to alternatives.
That's perhaps a good argument for having smaller free-and-equally-funded public schools with more within any given radius of every residence, with policies that leverage that to provide greater permitted and practical choice for students/parents independent of wealth, but unless freedom from bullying and peer pressure is desired to be gated by wealth I don't see how it opposes, in any way, abolition of either private schools or public districts with superior funding because the local residents are richer.
A Hawaiian school did not offer a G&T program due to a lack of funding for it. Participating in the normal classroom changed her to the point that it contributed to withdrawing her from school and we instead opted to home school. Coming from the mainland, Hawaii's general curriculum was behind and she became bored, faced relentless bullying from peers for being a "...know it all haole...," and found it difficult to make friends. She often came home with stories regarding the teacher spending significant time dealing with behavioral issues, negatively impacting instruction to the few children looking to learn. The teacher was also culpable for practicing a less engaging and micromanaging teaching style involving smothering children with worksheets during the school day, and forcing parents to initial all assignments and fill out learning logs at night. The teacher treated learning like a chore instead of a fun discovery process, and it killed her curiosity and motivation. After she was assaulted at her bus stop, we pulled her from school.
Fortunately, we only lived in Hawaii for a short time period and I was capable of taking a hiatus from professional life to home school her until we moved from Hawaii. We involved her in local home school groups to facilitate like-minded friendships and the customized, self-paced curriculum enabled her to make substantial strides in her subjects. Thankfully the damage done to her was temporary and she resumed her happy normal curious behavior.
In every other school with a G&T program, she has fit in and flourished. Good teachers, friends, and personal growth on her part. Not acknowledging that people have different aptitudes and motivations, then forcing them to learn from a cookie-cutter styled teaching program is a defunct social experiment gone awry. In our Hawaii case, it seemed like crabs in a bucket when it came to peer bullying. I get it, you're only as strong as your weak is a decent metaphor, but sometimes people and institutions are taking this concept to a degree that forces others down instead of boosting people up. I'm just guessing from personal experiences, but mixing students of all abilities appears to generate a net negative social welfare outcome.
As someone who had both experiences--being in classes that were separated for more advanced students, and being in classes that were not--I second this observation. I was much happier in the separated classes and got much more out of them.
Making them unnecessarily cut off from everyone else who isn't quite as "gifted" is worse, in a way. How is that kid going to get out of his/her bubble?
To be frank we already let social norms over reason lead us into enough nightmares and stupid decisions - we shouldn't be encouraging them.
And as I did mention in another comment I still can barely believe the cases of bullying people describe here, they are horrible! I don't think bullying at such a level is a global problem. I suspect such huge bullying problems must be just a symptom of a deeper society issue. We had a kid with Down syndrome in class for 8 years of primary school and nobody did EVER put a finger on him. By 12 years old I had known my classmates my whole live, quite a few of them also from activities outside school. I didn't like all of them, we had arguments which were not always handled diplomatically, but we had some basic decency towards each other.
Bullying and whether kids should be separated by ability are two orthogonal problems.
I had no idea that calls to public_policy return type bool.
Not sure what you're going for here?
That said, in my experience, the gifted/nerdy/aspy kids got the lion's share of the bullying. I still carry it with me decades later, and at least one of my comrades in misery killed herself because of it.
It might just be that I’m a complete asshole, but I grew up in Mississippi feeling very isolated and estranged from everyone around me. I think I definitely felt like I was bullied when I was very young. But by high school and college, I was being outright toxic to people.
If I am generous to myself, a lot of that could be attributed to anxiety, depression, lack of examples of how to behave pro-socially in my life, being in Mississippi (which as far as I can tell might truly be the worst place in all of the US). But I was still as much of bully as a lot of other people, maybe more.
I don’t think that’s an isolated event.
The bigger divide was between the 'gifted/nerdy/popular/athletic' group and the 'prone to violence, nihilistic body modification and hard drug use' group. Those kids weren't cool though. Drug use, poor grades, and criminal records all disqualified people from participating in sports, which negatively impacted their ability to socialize.
I think sports are a big equalizer. Through a shared enthusiasm for a sport, a stereotypical 'aspy nerd' and 'popular jock' can come to understand and respect each other. I don't think there is much else in the public school system quite as effective at tearing down these barriers as a healthy athletics program.
In my home town, sports were incredibly divisive, and football was the worst. Teachers were expected to go easy on football players. Football players got mostly ignored for shoplifting and other misbehavior. Football players even excluded other football players if they seemed too nerdy. Football players dumped a swimming pool full of sand on student body officers during a school assembly. Every student was forced to attend pep rallies to promote the football games.
Not every athlete was an athhole, but the general tenor was violent and rude to anyone not in their peer group.
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to unlearn those bully behaviors that enabled you to survive. Had you instead been able to focus your attention on developing your gifts and confidence, you would be much better off right now and society too, I imagine.
Suppose you have two. One's into javascript and dungeons and dragons. The other's not great academically. No good at football either, and they still behave in a slightly awkward way. But great person, all the same.
So, you condemn the latter child to the cesspit that is public life and protect the former? Or think up a better policy?
Someone with abundance in a community of scarcity is a target for bullying. That bullying robs the individual and society of those gifts.
So, yes, we protect the gifted, precisely so their gifts survive to benefit all of society, including the bullies. That's the irony. The gifted want by their nature to share their gifts and do so -- even with the bullies and at their own expense.
The average individual is much less likely to be bullied and thus need less protection.
"It'll all be ok if we keep away from the riff-raff" doesn't do anything but say "we can only really afford to educate X amount of kids". This lot are brick layers.
Of course who am I talking to? I don't know. Might be somebody who thinks gifted means Daddy has a yacht.
Gifted people don't escape bullying by growing up and it has immeasurably costly ramifications for society at large.
Me, I smoke weed and that’s about the only thing I’ve really done consistently since high school.. more consistently than music, and programming, even.
Frankly, I wish I had been better separated from the other kids. I would have been far happier in middle school just hanging around other nice, smart people. (With a few exceptions, the smart kids tended to be kind). The mixture with the “gen pop” led to bullying, repeated physical abuse and harassment by other kids from ages 10-12. This was decades ago when physical abuse amongst minors was often ignored, even by police.
By freshman year of high school, I was worn down and switched back to some non-honors classes mid-term. This unfortunately led to dysfunctional friendships with the “cool” kids (same bully crowd), introduction to drugs and a low achievement life. There was some form of Florence nightingale syndrome involved here, due to unresolved physical abuse leading to friendships with the abusers in high school.
Separating gifted children for accelerated learning is great. Ignoring social development by blindly sticking all kids together in unstructured environments where bullying and physical abuse is allowed to persist will override any hope for some kids. I know, I was there. Still here.