[quote=Tigerle]Ideally, each
In our school district, the majority of public school students are at or near the poverty level, and many school districts in the US are like this. I know you're in Europe, but you're comments make it obvious you are very unfamiliar with the demographics of the US public school population, because obviously you cannot possibly make every classroom "majority middle class" when the overwhelming majority of students are poor. There has been a mass exodus from the public school system for anyone who can escape. To get them to return they need to find the classrooms and schools and surroundings to be acceptable places to put their children, in particular they should be safe with few discipline problems, and they need to have decent educational standards. This necessitates abandoning any notion of SES and other quotas. In particular, gifted classes should be based on ability/achievement and if the gifted population differs demographically from the general population, then so be it. There are no legitimate grounds for regarding that demographic difference as being any kind of problem.
Actually, most of the research on the subject I've read has been compiled by Americans. Check out "The future of school integration", edited by Richard kahlenberg, or the controversy about the wake county school district. There is extensive research on where it is possible to integrate schools by SES within district and across school district lines, and where it is not possible to create ALL middle class majority schools, it is at least possible to significantly reduce the impact of poverty concentration. The numbers are out there, and I am familiar with them. As I have stated in another thread, it is not my place to criticize another nations education system or policies, but I have considered this a theoretical discussion, with all posters offering their thoughts about gifted education and its relation to SES integration in a perfect world. No offense meant, and hopefully, none taken!
Classroom composition effects by SES of children's parents on children's achievement are huge, as big as the effect that SES of the child's own family, but whereas the latter is a law of nature (and nurture) and completely legitimate, classroom composition is not. District lines and residential segregation aren't laws of nature either, all can be influenced by policy, policies that can however only be successful if the interests of the middle and high SES children are convincingly protected. Thus, quotas,to protect everyone from the insidious effect of high poverty concentration - among other measures, one of which must be ability grouping, but not by district, as it were.
To now move onto the actual topic, creating majority middle class classrooms for everyone should not have to affect gifted education at all, the gifted being defined as comprising only two percent of the population, thus negligible in terms of critical mass. Which I am sure we are perfectly in agreement on. What I am getting at with all this is hat in the classrooms, majorities count, and it is disingenuous of policy makers to pretend that they count only for children of low achievement or low SES.
So, a 2 percent slice of gifted kids in every city in a congregated program by third grade, and in larger cities, the 0.1 percent slice of the HG+: there is no excuse whatsoever to not have these classrooms, or to want to "spread" the gifted kids to raise achievement by offering opportunities for teachers to "spark off" in lower achieving classrooms, they can't, they won't, the shouldn't have to. Gifted clusters can be established below third grade, in semi rural and rural areas which do not have the critical masses for self contained classrooms beyond third grade, Montessori style elements can be used to have kids work at their own pace. None of which can reasonably be denied by doing anybody harm.
I happen to live in a country which has among the highest segregation by SES in secondary schools, simply by virtue of rigorous achievement tracking. No dime changing hands, not even indirectly via property taxes, access to high achievement track is free and guaranteed if low SES children show the achievement. They don't. So I am perfectly familiar with the dilemma of SES integration versus achievement or ability grouping. You can't square that circle for the gifted, nor should you have to, maybe not even for the high achieving above the 75th percentile or so. But classrooms composed of low SES low achievers all of the time are harmful for anyone.
Just as the OP has observed for their own school, there has been enormous pressure on the high achievement tracks in this country to expand, so much so that is comprises 50% or more in some parts of the country, with extreme pressure on children in the last year off elementary school to achieve the necessary GPA. However, apart from lake wobegon, more than 50% cannot be above average in achievement, and with the standards suddenly higher than elementary school and children unable to keep up even with hard work, tutoring and parental pressure, there has been very much a dilution effect, with teachers complaining that standard sad are slipping and they have to spend too much time with the lower achievers, and parents claiming that standards are too high and children have to work too hard (switching into a less prestigious track of course not being an option - that dreaded low SES majority awaiting there!). On the good side, this has created a much needed push towards differentiation and individualisation, but what has worked for the bottom now needs to be expanded towards the top. With the option of the congregated gifted classroom - ideally for the top 2 % and the top 0.1 % where possible.
Ah, the perfect world...
