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Comment by Kadin | Hacker News Reader

> It frees them up to explore being people.

This was not my experience. Granted, it was a while ago, and I'm not sure I'd call myself "gifted," but being ahead of the rest of the class certainly didn't get you any time to do interesting things -- it got you a pile of busywork and angry glances from the teacher for being such a pain in the ass.

I doubt things have changed much; if anything, due to increased student:teacher ratios, I suspect they've gotten worse. I don't have any kids but if I did, I'd be far more concerned about a particularly bright one being wrecked by public school than I would a special-needs one who lagged the rest of the class.

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I guess my point was more along the lines that "gifted" is a very undefined quantity and in my experience people who excel at class work are average in life. Also that given our education system, the best and brightest do not become teachers, thus any sort of "gifted" program is going to be for muppets by muppets. Given it is pretty much that already the news article has nothing to offer.

due to increased student:teacher ratios, I suspect they've gotten worse

Class size seems to be the single biggest concern related to education quality. However, it's not entirely clear that smaller classes help; especially not that they help "normal" students (as opposed to those who are "at-risk").

It seems that other things being equal, this is can be a big help to those that need extra help, especially when they're not getting much support educationally at home. But it doesn't seem to have the same effect on kids that are doing OK anyway.

Also, having smaller classes means having more teachers. And that means either offering much higher salaries or settling for less-good teachers. The latter is probably not helpful, and higher salaries may cost money that could deliver greater results when invested in other ways.

Simply assuming that your kids will do better if the classes are smaller is erroneous. Read a bit more here: http://www.edweek.org/rc/issues/class-size/

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