Gifted programs
There was an interesting article in the NYT recently (which I saw via Eduwonk) about how No Child Left Behind is draining funding from "gifted" programs in elementary and middle schools. I have weird reactions to education policy, I think primarily due to the fact that back in Vermont the public schools, while not amazing, were certainly pretty good. I generally just don't know how to talk with people who have a very negative view of public schools and view them as either no good academically or (as a visiting Princeton professor I talked with once at Quad claimed) a terrible social environment where all sorts of terrible behavior is tolerated. I was never super-popular and was always pretty nerdy, but I can only think of one brief time period where I was even really made fun of -- the 6th grade basketball team, where to be fair I was so terrible that I probably deserved to be made fun of. So I never know what to say to people who tell stories about how victimized they were in school -- "um, sorry, but no school I went to was ever like that"?
Back on topic -- gifted programs. I'm of two minds, once again due to my very positive experiences in public schools. First and obviously, I am generally considered to be "smart", and was definitely identified as such as early as the third grade. So I certainly sympathize with "gifted" students -- school can be boring when you're stuck doing things that you already understand, and if you're someone who actually enjoys learning new things then boring can turn into frustrating. And you certainly don't want to risk changing a bright, curious young kid into a bored troublemaker with too much time on his/her hands.
But on the other hand, and again influenced by my experiences, are these programs really necessary? Looking at the opening paragraph of the NYT article, here's what these "gifted" kids are doing:
"Adam Harris has built a robot whose arms bang out “Hot Cross Buns” on a piano keyboard. Cinzia Alfano is cobbling together a board game that teaches players why the Titanic sank so quickly - in sophisticated engineering detail. Mariam Hellalat is staging a murder scene speckled with DNA, fingerprints and bullet casings to intrigue, and mislead, student detectives, and she has researched the forensics to back up different theories of whodunit."
Seriously? This is what these students are doing? Because clearly what's needed for smart students is more projects. Projects were the bane of my existence in middle school and early high school, and I firmly believe that I would have been much better off had someone simply given me a textbook to read rather than making me do all sorts of stupid projects. And in fact, that's essentially what they had done for me earlier. When I was in third grade I was somehow identified as being good at math, so once a day or so I left my third-grade classroom and went over to "The White Building" where the fourth and fifth graders had class, and sat in on Mr. Bonavita's 4th/5th grade math class. Then again in 7th grade, Zack Belcher, Liz Bloomhardt and I became the first 7th graders ever at my school to take algebra -- we sat in on the normal 8th grade algebra class. Then having nothing left to teach us in 8th grade, they got a volunteer (actually my dad) to come teach us discrete math once a week. Let me repeat that: once a week. The rest of the time Zack, Liz and I worked out of a textbook. And guess what? We learned a lot.
So basically, I'd advocate having a "gifted" program that simply sent students up to higher level classes. Note that this costs exactly $0, keeps kids from getting bored, and probably teaches them more than they would learn from doing projects. Obviously I don't really know what I'm talking about and am basing this purely on my own experience at a small school in Vermont, but intuitively this seems to be a simple and easy solution.
Back on topic -- gifted programs. I'm of two minds, once again due to my very positive experiences in public schools. First and obviously, I am generally considered to be "smart", and was definitely identified as such as early as the third grade. So I certainly sympathize with "gifted" students -- school can be boring when you're stuck doing things that you already understand, and if you're someone who actually enjoys learning new things then boring can turn into frustrating. And you certainly don't want to risk changing a bright, curious young kid into a bored troublemaker with too much time on his/her hands.
But on the other hand, and again influenced by my experiences, are these programs really necessary? Looking at the opening paragraph of the NYT article, here's what these "gifted" kids are doing:
"Adam Harris has built a robot whose arms bang out “Hot Cross Buns” on a piano keyboard. Cinzia Alfano is cobbling together a board game that teaches players why the Titanic sank so quickly - in sophisticated engineering detail. Mariam Hellalat is staging a murder scene speckled with DNA, fingerprints and bullet casings to intrigue, and mislead, student detectives, and she has researched the forensics to back up different theories of whodunit."
Seriously? This is what these students are doing? Because clearly what's needed for smart students is more projects. Projects were the bane of my existence in middle school and early high school, and I firmly believe that I would have been much better off had someone simply given me a textbook to read rather than making me do all sorts of stupid projects. And in fact, that's essentially what they had done for me earlier. When I was in third grade I was somehow identified as being good at math, so once a day or so I left my third-grade classroom and went over to "The White Building" where the fourth and fifth graders had class, and sat in on Mr. Bonavita's 4th/5th grade math class. Then again in 7th grade, Zack Belcher, Liz Bloomhardt and I became the first 7th graders ever at my school to take algebra -- we sat in on the normal 8th grade algebra class. Then having nothing left to teach us in 8th grade, they got a volunteer (actually my dad) to come teach us discrete math once a week. Let me repeat that: once a week. The rest of the time Zack, Liz and I worked out of a textbook. And guess what? We learned a lot.
So basically, I'd advocate having a "gifted" program that simply sent students up to higher level classes. Note that this costs exactly $0, keeps kids from getting bored, and probably teaches them more than they would learn from doing projects. Obviously I don't really know what I'm talking about and am basing this purely on my own experience at a small school in Vermont, but intuitively this seems to be a simple and easy solution.