Hacker News Reader

Comment by riskable | Hacker News Reader

There is a well-known effect where segregating kids into gifted VS non-gifted harms the education of the non-gifted while only having a marginal impact on the gifted:

https://ncrge.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/982/2019/04...

Basically, non-gifted kids learn from the gifted ones. It's that whole, "positive influence from peers" thing.

In the long term, having gifted programs results in a handful of accelerated students and a lot more struggling ones (at the end of mandatory education).

View on HN

> Basically, non-gifted kids learn from the gifted ones. It's that whole, "positive influence from peers" thing.

In other words, let’s drag the smart students down, disallow them a better education, and instead force them to teach their peers because we don’t think their teachers are doing a good job?

This is a terrible way to solve a problem.

Honestly, nothing has done a better job of solidifying my understanding of a material than trying to explain it to other people. We should be giving students more opportunities to do this, not less.

How does giving some students AP classes take away their opportunity to tutor other classmates? Do they not have friends in the non-gifted track?

That’s fallacious.

The students won’t get a chance to learn the advanced material by examining it to others because they won’t be allowed to learn the advanced material.

How do people not see the harms in banning advanced classes?

You're presupposing that the only possible way to provide enrichment is by tracking people into advanced classes.

On the contrary, the study you cite found no significant effect either way for either group. From the last page: "we find that gifted grouping does not help or hurt the achievement growth of gifted students nor does it help or hurt the achievement growth of non-gifted students" (emphasis mine.) This certainly does not imply that separating gifted tracks results in a lot more struggling students.

Thank you! It’s perpetually frustrating that so many have come up with false ideas about gifted programs hurting other student.

Allowing advanced students to learn advanced topics should be an easy decision for everyone. It’s so strange that it’s become a contentious topic.

Based on what GP said, it isn't clear that the implementation of "allowing advanced students to learn advanced topics" is successful either. It seems like the current gifted/non-gifted system isn't working.

I mean that's nice and all. But then you can also get behavioral issues from gifted students who feel stifled. Their needs aren't less important than the other students'.

Kids usually don't learn "school" things like math, reading, and science from each other. They learn behaviors. Kindness, cooperation, competition, integrity, working hard, not being disruptive etc. Having a gifted track for part of the day doesn't disrupt that learning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com