Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion DoE seeks equality in AP, gifted classes

We clearly see the world from different perspectives. I'm speaking at the macro level and you are speaking at the micro level. When the head of the regulatory department comes to me and says that the FCC wants to us to halt sales on a major product because they have decided a previously approved internal part now causes unlawful interference due to a changed interpretation of the rules, it is not in any way analogous to a traffic stop. It matters when the cost of fighting in terms of lost sales and legal fees far exceeds the lesser penalty they offer if we don't fight.


Anyway, this is getting off topic, so I will stop.

Yes I realised I was wrong. Well at least I wad only right if prior to that students had equal access. I am low income so I forget that the fact I had a good education offsets the income a lot for my kids. I can't always send them to stuff but I can discuss science and maths.

Eta. Although in the case being discussed it did sound like the decision was not made on grades.

I have always thought it would be fun to insist all sports teams be made up of an equal mix of low, middle and high performing players. Surely if it is beneficial in academics it should be beneficial in sport?

Well, there are the usual suspects, the abecedarian project, the perry project, all rather dated of course. The problem with Head Start results is twofold:
One, even if results are good in the short term, they do not last into third grade. Which begs the question: just what kind of school did the kids go to after Head Start? Four years of high poverty low quality schooling surely destroy any gains a kid might have made in one year of Head Start!
Two: what defines a high quality program? If you factor in SES composition, Head Start, like any preschool program designed for low SES children, CANNOT be high quality. For this, I refer you to "socioeconomic diversity and early learning" by Jeanne L. Reid, in The future of school integration. It's not just instructional quality or student teacher ratio.
Majority middle and high SES preschool classrooms can keep the average skills gap present at preschool entry (one standard deviation in language, three fourths of a standard deviation in maths) from at least widening. If you at least want to keep it that way, you have to make sure that children remain in in majority middle and high SES classrooms through out their schooling (which does not have to affect gifted programs, by design intended for 2% of the student population, at all). You will then not get equity in distribution by the time AP classes come around, but you will get better numbers.
You cannot get full equity unless you get perfect equity in both SES and intelligence of course. Khmer Rouge communism might get us there, nothing less. One would wish policy makers realized that.

LOL! Yes it would be fun to see the faces. I promise next time this comes up in real life, I'll try it out. Problem is, there is so much ideology in these debates, and these ideological folks just have no sense of humour...

Seriously, the one difference is that while most of us couldn't care less about raising standards for low skilled people in sports, we do all of us have a stake in raising standards in academic skills related to employment prospects. There may have to be some trade off.
It is related to the debate about how much inclusion of special needs children regular classrooms can take without damage to educational outcomes for the regular kids. I will of course work to have my youngest special needs child mainstreamed as far as possible, but I am perfectly aware that among those regular healthy kids, there will have to be those who could turn out to be the super qualified neurosurgeons my child needs to maintain his quality of life, and I would not want to disrupt their education in any significant way,

If you live in a country with Little League, you have seen this sports experiment. While it might be rather harmless in a sport like swimming, in baseball and softball, it is downright dangerous. (I realize that puffin was likely being facetious about the sports, but just a warning about doing this...)

Little League is a great place for kids to start, but for the most part, Little League is not good baseball/softball. In the last twenty years or so, some trophy hunting coaches realized this and decided to get together groups of travel players to play the "tournament ball" part of Little League - you see the 11 and 12 year old kids in Williamsport each year in the Little League World Series (and there are other World Series for other ages, held elsewhere) - with the goal of making it to the World Series.

The bad part is that to play tournament, you must play in majority of the regular season Little League games in your town league. Think about the older age groups - high school kids - and the mix of kids who just want some fresh air and to socialize in with kids playing travel and active in the college recruiting process. A few years ago, one kid ended up with serious facial fractures and she was rushed into emergency surgery. She is fine now (and in fact, attending an Ivy - very bright kid), but the point is, this is not a good experiment.

While I hear words like "toxic" for gifted kids in bad environments, typically mixing in with NT kids does not result in physical harm. Mixing gifted athletes and low ability athletes has some bad results.

I don't agree with mixing in low ability students with AP ability students, and we really don't see that happening where we live. There are plenty of very bright kids, and there are three other levels of classes (honors, college prep, academic) to serve the other kids. It will be interesting to see the average AP score at our HS this year, as they instituted a new policy of "take an AP course, must take the AP test". I think the percentage of kids taking an AP test boosts your HS ranking in US News and World Report. In the past, about half of the kids took an AP exam, and the average score was 4+. We'll see what happens.

Psychological harm is being discussed when a "toxic" environment is mentioned. Resources such as those found at SENG, Great Potential Press, Prufrock Press, and Magination Press - American Psychological Association (APA) are often brought to bear. Whether wounds are physical or psychological, there may be some which heal well and others which may have lingering effects.

With changes to AP, a year-over-year comparison will be apples-and-oranges at best.

At what point would you consider the disruption to their education to be significant?

Are you suggesting that children whose parents read to them and converse with them thereby aiding the child's ability to learn... should be subject to a type of sensory deprivation in preschool to assure they do not continue to learn... because other children effectively living with sensory deprivation at home... may gain compensatory benefits in preschool... and the ultimate goal is not the continued growth of each child but outcomes which are identical?

Are you suggesting that you would like to see things move in this direction? This was a massive genocide. Do you see gifted children benefitting from implementation of such measures?

Well, my personal frame of reference so far is a child with a major physical disability and (so far) an expressive language delay, but clearly bright and with an easygoing personality, so if I felt that a high achiever or even a gifted program was the right fit for his academic needs, I'd expect a program to work around the minor inconveniences a wheelchair or a walker and the need to catheterise himself at fixed initials would bring. Some of these children with language delays develop little speech, necessitating an iPad, some slurred speech, necessitating more time for oral contributions, which might make quick thinking and quick talking gifties impatient. I would not consider that a significant disruption, other parents might.
Locally, there has been a huge debate about a child with Down syndrome whose mother insisted on mainstreaming him into a high achiever program in middle school because that was where most kids from his high SES elementary school happened to be moving on to. The kid would throw backpacks and crayons, lie down on the floor and snore when not adequately stimulated, and was reading and doing maths at about a first grade level, which necessitated an aide in the classroom (30 kids) teaching him a differentiated curriculum at all times, except for the times when the aide wouldn't be there (roughly for one period a day) when the middle school classroom teacher would have been expected to come up with something on their own. The school refused, saying they were not adequately resourced and the proposed plan would be too disruptive. The debate went all the way up to prime time national television. I think in this instance the school was right.

In DS8s classroom, there is a kid with (diagnosed, but unacknowledged and certainly untreated) ADHD and most likely unacknowledged dyslexia, who has turned into the class bully. He was almost expelled in first grade for vandalizing school bathrooms, is disruptive every single day and influences other kids as well so that the whole class now has a reputation as a troublemaker class and occasionally shares punishments, even though there is clearly one ringleader and a few followers who manage to disrupt the whole classroom. DS happened to have to do a science presentation with him because on the day the teams were formed, DS was away sick and this kid was away doing detention. DS freaked out every morning while they had to do the work saying F never focused, never did a thing, making him prepare almost everything (poster, cue cards) himself, and when the were supposed to practice, he'd do things like throw down the cue cards, saying they had broken their legs or needed to go to sleep, when actually reading, reading so softly or badly that DS couldn't tell where he was at on the cards, or just run away saying he'd rather do maths now. Because of many disruptions, their presentation was moved up 6 (that's six) times, they were the last to finally be able to hold it to the class, and DS says no one could understand a word of what he read.
DS was a mess the whole time. They got a B for the teamwork part, DS got a B for his presentation part, kid F got a D, so DS got a B overall out of it, the other kid a C. I am sure DS learned a lot about how hard it is to work with a kid with ADHD, and I am sure the other kid could raise his science grade, but I am sure DS learned next to nothing either in academic content or in actual teamwork management or presentation skills. If I didn't need that teachers goodwill for subject acceleration and hadn't been in and out of hospital with my special needs youngest, I might have interfered. (All the work was to be done in school, no parent input, so we could nt have interfered without raising a major fuss).
That's what I think is unreasonably disruptive to the little learning even an HG+ kid can expect in an elementary classroom.
DS now says he wishes the boy were removed from the class. I am not that far, but think the parents must be forced out of denial.