Val The LAUSD is the largest in the country, has a huge pool of extremely affluent children in pockets, and is probably the only place you could cordon off the 'gifted' children in that way. In Seattle and its suburbs, the cutoff is actually higher and most programs have children in separate classrooms. Seattle has one gifted school which is overcrowded, and which has generated huge amounts of political ill-will, mainly due to the insufferable parents who insist that their children couldn't learn if near the other children. It's not a great situation, I will say that.
Our suburb has separate classrooms. The IQ cutoff is 150 or so, much more rare than 145, but due to test prep and affluence etc. they have, I believe, about 8 gifted 3rd grade classrooms for 2014-15, among a total of approximately 25 or so 3rd grade classrooms district-wide.
Yes, that is statistically ridiculous and impossible. I believe it comes down to the fact that parental input inflates scores upwards and we have early testing (1st grade). So whereas you'd probably see more of these kids at IQ=135 four years on (even with parental prepping continuing, it just has less of an effect than motivation), that is not what we see in the gifted program.
HowlerKarma--Robust results--
A lot of these programs do not prove effective in the long run because we do not have a meritocracy in place to incentivize academic achievement.
Scholarships are hard to come by--you can't just be #2 in your class and be in the 95% for SATs. In many countries, that would be enough to guarantee you a spot in college. I know a woman who was in this position but due to a lack of religious or other affiliation (she was "generic" white) she didn't get a single scholarship. She dropped out of college. This was 15 years ago and things are much worse now. I myself had better SATs, but was "only" 3rd in my class among AP class takers. I, too, dropped out of college but went to community college. Only by working 80 hour weeks at a minimum wage that was 20% higher in terms of purchasing power than it is now, was I able--as a minority-scholarship eligible person--to finish school, with loans. We were from a small town. I know three other people, one black, two white, who dropped out due to economic reasons. All of them were in the top five in their classes, did well on their SATs. How we would later laugh about those lies they told us:
"Work hard in school and you'll get a scholarship!!!"
Yeah, right.
American children actually do pretty well, before the poor figure out the extent to which it doesn't matter how well they do--the price of college is too high, the community college too far, gas prices too high, the need for cash to help their parents pay rent too urgent, to go. And they give up.
That is what causes so many of these effects to drop off in high school, and why our international standings drop off. People stop trying because they lose hope. If only we could lie more effectively to teenagers.
From Wikipedia:
"International comparison
In the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment 2003, which emphasizes problem solving, American 15 year olds ranked 24th of 38 in mathematics, 19th of 38 in science, 12th of 38 in reading, and 26th of 38 in problem solving.[134] In the 2006 assessment, the U.S. ranked 35th out of 57 in mathematics and 29th out of 57 in science. Reading scores could not be reported due to printing errors in the instructions of the U.S. test booklets. U.S. scores were behind those of most other developed nations.[135]
However, the picture changes when low achievers, Blacks and Hispanics, in the U.S. are broken out by race. White and Asian students in the United States are generally among the best-performing pupils in the world; black and Hispanic students in the U.S. have very high rates of low achievement. Black and Hispanic students in the US do out perform their counterparts in all African and Hispanic countries.[136][137]
US fourth and eighth graders tested above average on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study tests, which emphasizes traditional learning.[138]"
Head Start targets children to keep them out of jail. Literally, lower incarceration rates in the future is a major explicit goal of this program. But it's useless, because education doesn't keep you out of jail. Being white and living in a nice place does--statistically speaking, of course. But when you're putting in tons of effort, it's not nice to know that you have about a 50 times higher chance of having it all taken away from you, than some other kid putting in less effort, all because of the color of your skin, or the junky town / neighborhood you live in.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2014/01/marijuana-legalization-in-black-and-white/(Sorry for the religious link.)
Inequality is what causes our low outcomes later on. Children keep striving... until an older brother gets arrested, a parent gets sick or loses their job, and then the economic reality hits.
Though Asians and Whites do better on average, if you break those groups down by socio-economic group and heritage, there are shocking divisions among each sub-set. The poor rural white vs. the New England entrenched classes, the political refugee Asian (Hmong, Cambodian, etc.) vs. the economic migrant Asian (Chinese, Japanese), vs. African Americans who are descended from slaves vs. African economic migrants (Kenyans, Tanzanians, Ghanaians) vs. African political refugees (Somalis, Sudanese, Congolese)--it comes down to why you came here, and who you think you are, and what place you think you can have in this society.
/soapbox
It's like the RCT question brought up earlier. We can't control for all these factors, so just thinking of making elementary school meritocratic, or distributing resources in that pool, does not make sense. In order to incentivize people to perform, we absolutely must create a meritocracy.
That's why though I have one view about what I want for my own child, I have another view about what I want to see for education and social programs in the US.
