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A comment on The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021). Parent comment

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by sokoloff on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:58PM (#31672322)
My experience suggests that "when more people qualify for gifted programs than can fit in the program, consider slightly raising the qualification level, so you get exactly the class size you're targeting and no one who qualifies was excluded" is the likely path to be chosen.
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Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by TameAntelope on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @03:20PM (#31672620)
That presumes some quantifiable, precisely and accurately measurable metric, which does not exist in any context.

For example, there is no test in existence that accurately measures "giftedness" in children.

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Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by sokoloff on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @03:37PM (#31672866)
How is qualification already being done today, such that the set of people qualified is larger than the available seats?

Is there no adjustment whatsoever possible to that process? If the people running that process had had a slightly tighter set of criteria, would the outward appearance be dramatically different than the path they took to get to the "slightly too many qualified" condition?

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Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by TameAntelope on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @03:55PM (#31673118)
There is no adjustment whatsoever possible that will accurately further qualify/disqualify students from a gifted program, that is correct.

Simply "tightening" the existing fuzzy criteria will only further arbitrarily limit qualified students.

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Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by sokoloff on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @04:04PM (#31673240)
That's exactly my point. There's a system today that has some amount of arbitrariness to it. Tweaking that system slightly is almost surely arbitrariness-preserving, likely not increasing or decreasing it significantly.
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Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by TameAntelope on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @05:03PM (#31674122)
My point is that it's increasing the arbitrariness by further constricting the qualified students pool.

Instead, accept they're all qualified insofar as they would maximally benefit from advanced lessons, and favor students for whom this may be their only opportunity to get ahead.

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