My kids could read and do math in K, unlike many of their classmates.
At that point it doesn't really matter, because K is really about play and learning the conventions.
By the end of 2nd grade it was clear that they were bored out of their minds. So to private school they went.
For parents with kids that aren't motivated it's hard to understand what the fuss is.
But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation.
> they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here.
This claim about the USSR seems strange to me.
In high school, I had a couple of classmates from the USSR and they had been attending advanced schools since childhood. They were brilliant mathematicians. The state-sponsored educational system had recognized their talents and lifted them up.
I understood the collapse of the Soviet Union to be a net loss for educational funding, but I am by no means sure of this.
In USSR they actually recognized gifted students and placed them into specialized classes and schools where they would thrive. They treated it as a matter of national security. The math circles and dedicated schools with STEM had the state support. The "equity" applied to the later stages of life - an engineer or a scientist would earn not much more than a blue collar worker.
>In USSR they actually recognized gifted students and placed them into specialized classes and schools where they would thrive. They treated it as a matter of national security.
I remember decades ago my undergrad statistics teacher pulling up some data on collegiate club (like chess and poker, not like ultimate frisbee) winnings in competition.
I forget what the point of the lecture was, something about data distribution types, but the takeaway was that Miami Dade Community college consistently punched above its weight class since it educated a population that was on average subject to more USSR style "identify those gifted in a niche and develop their skills" than the baseline.
That said, there's a reason those people were attending community college in Miami...
>an engineer or a scientist would earn not much more than a blue collar worker.
The blue collar trades were preferred because you had more opportunities to get stuff to barter, better still if your job involved going out and about and doing things, you could meet many people to transact with.
In the USSR, engineers were effectively paid less than laborers in meat packing plants. The latter could steal food to sell on the black market. Engineers couldn't walk out with much more than pencils.
Same story for my middle kid. He’s bored out of his mind in 2nd grade math. He overheard me explaining square roots to his older sister while he was working on a coloring page at a restaurant waiting for our food. Then he pops his head up and says “so square and square root are the opposite of each other” (which isn’t something I said). He’s an exact clone of my brother, who has a BS in Physics from Yale.
It’s not because he “works hard,” and I don’t tiger parent. There’s just smart kids and average kids and dumb kids.
Yeah, we are free range parents, but we are kind of recognizing we should help him develop his math talent. I can do math okay, I majored in engineering, but he’s got a math intuition I lack. He’s also got a pretty short attention span, though.
In 3rd grade, my mother went in for a parent-teacher conference, and my teacher (who was a complete asshole) gave me terrible marks on behavior, but then said I was great at math. She literally said “whenever I have a math problem or something I don’t understand, I always ask Michael.”
My mom nearly fell out of her chair. What 3rd grade teacher has 3rd grade math problems they need a 3rd grader’s help with?!
My mom got me a math tutor literally the next day, and I’ve never been more thankful (in hindsight). That tutor focused on teaching me advanced math (for my age), and suddenly my behavior improved. Funny that.
So my recommendation would be, if possible, find a math tutor for enrichment. I don’t mean “start studying for the SAT,” so hopefully don’t take it that way. :)
>But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation.
Whether or not to cut gifted and talented programs is very much debated on the "left".
I've never heard much debate in the US on this, but in the UK it was very much the left that eliminated selective education in most of the country, and it's a political third rail to talk about it for any mainstream political party today (other than, no doubt, Reform - even a stopped clock is right twice a day, I suppose).
This seems to refer to separate advanced schools vs. advanced classes that most in the US would be familiar with.
One analog in my area (Boston) is perhaps METCO, where ambitious students in impoverished districts can be bussed to wealthier suburban schools. It's fairly benign compared with the infamous forced bussing of the 1970s- a judge forced lower class black and white parts of the city to bus students to each other's schools in order to eliminate segregation- it caused riots. Sure there was racism, but the main complaint was that rich suburban towns were not included.
Another ongoing debate is over "charter schools"- where public funds are used for private schools that can be selective about their students. There are good arguments both for and against them. One against is that they can be for-profit even though they are not supposed to be. For example, they often pay rent to somebody- this never happens as far as I know for public schools.
Yes, the original policy in the UK was for separate schools rather than advanced classes - the equivalent policy for advanced classes was (is?) known as "streaming". I don't know of any charter schools which are for-profit (funding state students attendance at fee-paying schools was eliminated at some point in the 90s I believe also), but the nearest equivalent would be a "free school" which must be a non-profit.
Yes, but it's the furthest left that is for cutting gifted and talented programs, by and large. So while not all of the left wants to, the left left does.
i don’t think this is true at all. if anything the people i know with far-left tendencies want significantly more funding for school programs, including gifted.
what makes me question what you’re saying even more is i have right-wing friends who most certainly do not want more funding for any school programs, including gifted. and i have classical liberal friends who think we should give tax breaks for private schools for “gifted”.
It's so sad to see such vehement energetic invented madness. Pure fabrication & delusion, and there's such a massive podcaster and regular media system pumping out false idols to flail against.
I suspect your right wing friends would agree if you said “society should focus additional resources developing people who are naturally gifted.” If you frame it in terms of “school funding,” what you’re actually measuring is their beliefs about whether school funds actually reach the kids they’re supposed to help.
> i have right-wing friends who most certainly do not want more funding for any school programs, including gifted
This is a strawman, though it may not seem like one. I agree that much of the right wants less funding for public education in general, and/or wants more funding for parochial schools and the like. But that is not who I'm talking about.
Those on the right who support public education also support funding gifted/talented schools/programs, because they base it on 'merit' and you may have seen that word thrown around recently by that orange guy. G&T programs explicity fit into their policy and world view, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
> i have classical liberal friends who think we should give tax breaks for private schools for “gifted”.
Cool, but they're not 'left' by the American standards. Classical liberals are more akin to American libertarians in terms of beliefs/opinions. Which again, is not who I'm talking about.
Most public school districts in America spend north of $20,000 per student per year. That’s $400,000 a year for a classroom of 20 students.
Anyone who thinks money is the limiting factor in education is either delusional or is receiving a chunk of that money that never makes it into the classroom.
Countries all over the planet provide superior education to students for a tenth of the cost.
Your right wing friends are correctly but ambiguously stating that if we can’t have a gifted program at these funding levels, there will never be a gifted program at any funding level.
Yeah, “left” isn’t a useful term in this context. As noted elsewhere, Soviet Russia focused on developing gifted kids. On the other hand, so does Iran, which has a super right wing government.
Can you share more about education in the USSR? My impression is that for all its faults, education is one area where the USSR excelled, with very high standards and outcomes.
TP is largely correct - there was no “advanced track” or any kind of differentiation at a normal school systemically. There were “gymnasiums” - a kind of specialized schools starting grade 8 or 9 and only in big cities and you could apply if you test well and/or your parents knew somebody who knew somebody
Your impression is correct. OP's fallen into the classic trap of equating the American "left" (which isn't left at all) with socialism, and that with the USSR. It's all nonsense free association of "things conservatives dislike", from the same mine that yielded gems like "cultural Marxism" (another nonsense).
Right the USSR was famously known to not aggressively coach and foster young talent in math, physics, and chess. There's literally no prodigies from there.
> But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here.
Both US political parties have pushed for educational reforms that have resulted in this sort of accusation.
There was a long running idea on the right that faltering education was a national security threat, and naturally parents want their kids to have a decent education. Things changed a bit after George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" ended up extremely unpopular, but you still hear some of the same talking points.
You do know that for the last decade educators nationally have been talking about the "Mississippi Miracle" where they've gone from the bottom performing state at nearly every level to being about a grade-level ahead of the national average, right?
All while still remaining the poorest state in the nation no less.
In large part due to the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, sponsored by state Republicans that got bi-partisan support except for a faction of state house Democrats that tried to kill the bill because they didn't come up with it.
It was so effective that the model was copied successfully by other states.
You could not have chosen a worse example to prove your point.
At that point it doesn't really matter, because K is really about play and learning the conventions.
By the end of 2nd grade it was clear that they were bored out of their minds. So to private school they went.
For parents with kids that aren't motivated it's hard to understand what the fuss is.
But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation.