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Right-- the point is that it isn't good for any students to be too far from the center of the distribution relative to a peer setting.

But this ignores the mathematical reality that someone has to be on the edges.

It also ignores the reality that there is a pretty hard delineation in terms of "gap" there-- that is, exposure to people half a standard deviation beyond yourself in ability is GOOD, and encouraging since you can practice full cognitive extension/reach regularly, but placement with those TWO standard deviations beyond your current ability is highly detrimental and damaging.

It's the second part of that which seems to have completely eluded most educators, I have found. That boggles my mind.
This is why students are retained. Sheesh.

I agree that it may be. The question to ask would be, "I see this provides very strong evidence for the benefits of acceleration. How do you define acceleration here at School X? What would that look like for my child?"


Well, the scores for GT programming were relatively positive--acceleration most of all, clearly, But these? These look pretty darn lukewarm, esp. given the 4 slides afterwards listing reasons not to track...


I have mixed feelings on tracking because it's obviously a complex issue, but no one benefits from avoiding the truth, whatever it may be. If the truth is that disadvantaged kids lose out from tracking and our kids benefit, we need to look at that honestly and consider what can be done--not just focus on our kids. If the truth is that our kids lose out by not tracking, but disadvantaged kids gain, the system needs to not just blow off our kids, but take that seriously as well.

"I have mixed feelings on tracking because it's obviously a complex issue, but no one benefits from avoiding the truth, whatever it may be. If the truth is that disadvantaged kids lose out from tracking and our kids benefit, we need to look at that honestly and consider what can be done--not just focus on our kids. If the truth is that our kids lose out by not tracking, but disadvantaged kids gain, the system needs to not just blow off our kids, but take that seriously as well."

Yes. Totally agree. And this is coming from someone with kids in a school that does not accelerate or track until 8th grade. Granted, we have a (relatively) very small population of disadvantaged kids here, but this is a very important point. I also wanted to go against the grain mention that we have been fortunate to have had a very positive experience with in-class differentiation- once. The teacher has to be exceptional, and there needs to be at least 1-2 other kids in the class somewhat near your kid's level, but it can be done.

DS is about to enter the same class, which was fantastic for our DD; the school created a mix of special Ed and high GT kids, and armed them with 2 teachers, one a spec Ed teacher and one an expert at differentiation, and the outcome was a huge win-win, with everyone getting their needs met, more-or-less together. I am not sure how they justified the whole plan and it was decidedly under-the-radar for those not involved in the class- I'm sure they were wary of parents who felt these kids were getting "more" of something. Seems like it will take a seismic shift in mindset, for both teachers and parents.

Maybe going too far off center from the thread... but I've been thinking about this on and off for years. This and having a kid sort of brings it together more. I remember in the eighties reading an article in I think Omni about a "mastery based" approach to education. Where once you achieved 90% you moved on to another topic (and I was like "holy $#, wish school had been like that.")

If you pair that with a measure like "repetitions to mastery," then you get a "you got it, move on" acceleration along with a sense of how much time/practice each student needs. Obviously the mastery list is dynamic, similarly the average repetitions to master change as students may change their rates. If you look at the sort of concepts/topics common core points at, you don't necessarily have to ask for qualitatively different instruction unless it fits a concept that has been mastered. If you've mastered "extracting theme" then your reading instruction should include discussions of theme or whatnot.

Fairly high level and unpolished, but sorta serves as my mental yardstick, and I think done right it dodges tracking and its conceptual baggage.

I'm going to beat the same old drum and say that many of these problems would be ameliorated by doing away with age based cohorts. Innately low ability children would still benefit from the presence of high ability students at all levels, with the added benefit that the high ability children would be motivated to achieve at their potential. The aspirational benchmark for non-GT students would be higher, and there would be greater commingling across abilities, presumably with trickle down.

The slides are pretty dire. Talk about a straw man presentation.

There was probably a lot of talking along with the slides. This school doesn't do ability based tracking except the "walk to maths thing". I have been looking forward to that because even his teacher who doesn't really believe his test results mean anything admits he needs extension.

While being exposed to kids with a range of abilities may be good for some kids my son is 2 points short of 4 standard deviations above the mean and has to be asked to give others a turn to answer (how long before he stops answering questions?)

oh well, time will tell.

Puffin, what I'm imagining is a +4SD child of, say, 6 being grouped with average 12 year olds (and, hopefully other >+2SD students). So, they'd have different innate abilities when indexed to a common age, but similar achievement levels on comparable material.

That would be good wouldn't it. Especially if there was some way of ensuring cross class playing at breaks - maybe change classes for some things. My son is pretty average at writing (I think it is the creative process not physical as he is fairly good if he is writing about a book or non fiction) but is way above in reading and maths. My mother went to a school with 18 kids from 5 to 13 which would be good for him with the right teacher. In fact the teacher my mother remembers who taught them all sorts of obscure natural science and classics stuff would be perfect.

Yes, agree with this totally.