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I have read the archives, but there isn't much on this.
Has anyone in a 'good district' had success in lobbying their school board to do even subtle ability grouping for highly advanced/gifted students, to improve the odds of meaningful differentiation?
What I'm looking for, short of my ideal of a Westchester-wide K-12 gifted school similar to the citywide G&T schools, is at least clustering students who assess in the top 2% together in the same otherwise inclusive class, with a teacher certified in gifted education. Remaining classes would still include above average students and thus be inclusive.
But my feelers indicate this modest proposal will be met with hysterical opposition in my particular town, which has no problem spending quadruple the national ratio per student and 1/3 of its programming budget on Special Ed, or clustering the Special Ed kids in otherwise inclusive classrooms.
My daughter would start K in 3 years, and we otherwise love the town, but I just can't see committing to the taxes and district if they don't do right by gifted students. The HS looks good, 20 AP offerings. But the NYS K-5 common core would clearly be painfully boring to sit through for a kid multiple standard deviations from the mean. Fractions in 5th grade?
Last edited by entropywins; 10-11-2017 at 03:05 PM..
I have read the archives, but there isn't much on this.
one in a 'good district' had success in lobbying their school board to do even subtle ability grouping for highly advanced/gifted students, to improve the odds of meaningful differentiation?
What I'm looking for, short of my ideal of a Westchester-wide K-12 gifted school similar to the citywide G&T schools, is at least clustering students who assess in the top 98% together in the same otherwise inclusive class, with a teacher certified in gifted education. Remaining classes would still include above average students and thus be inclusive.
But my feelers indicate this proposal will be met with hysterical hostility in my particular town, which has no problem spending quadruple the national ratio per student and 1/3 of its programming budget on Special Ed, or clustering the Special Ed kids in otherwise inclusive classrooms.
My daughter would start K in 3 years, and we otherwise love the town, but I just can't see committing to the taxes and district if they don't do right by gifted students. The HS looks good, 20 AP offerings. But the NYS K-5 common core would clearly be painfully boring to sit through for a kid multiple standard deviations from the mean. Fractions in 5th grade?
That's basically all the students, excluding only the bottom 2%. Do you mean 98th percentile and above?
Yup, I meant top 2% or 98th percentile, which is ~2 or more standard deviations from the mean on normal distribution assessments, and the traditional (though yes, imperfect) standard for 'gifted.'
But the specific cutoff isn't important, rather just clustering highly-advanced students together in an otherwise inclusive class with a gifted-trained teacher, similarly to how districts will defray Special Ed costs by grouping several students with the same disability in one otherwise inclusive class with a teacher trained in meeting the needs of that particular group.
Do any of the otherwise highly-rated WC districts do anything like this?
Last edited by entropywins; 10-11-2017 at 03:22 PM..
Yup, I meant top 2% or 98th percentile, which is ~2 or more standard deviations from the mean on normal distribution assessments, and the traditional (though yes, imperfect) standard for 'gifted.'
But the specific cutoff isn't important, rather just clustering highly-advanced students together in an otherwise inclusive class with a gifted-trained teacher, similarly to how districts will defray Special Ed costs by grouping several students with the same disability in one otherwise inclusive class with a teacher trained in meeting the needs of that particular group.
Do any of the otherwise highly-rated WC districts do anything like this?
I'm aware of SDs that give additional or alternative "enrichment" lessons in certain subjects to kids who test well - but none with such a high cut off. Its more top 25%ish
I'm aware of SDs that give additional or alternative "enrichment" lessons in certain subjects to kids who test well - but none with such a high cut off. Its more top 25%ish
The traditional standard for gifted isn't 98th percentile for a district, but for the whole population. Its two standard deviations from average, which is the same criteria used to diagnose developmental delay special needs on the other end of the scale.
I'm sure the Scarsdale, Bronxvilles, etc have more like 10% of the student body fitting the traditional 'gifted' criteria. These districts wont blink to hire specialists and cluster if 5 kids have a particular special needs diagnosis, why not provide the same appropriate education for the students with significantly advanced cognitive abilities that render the general classroom unsuitable?
The figure would be higher if wealthy parents of exceptionally gifted kids kept them in the local district instead of choosing elite prep and boarding schools. Which might happen more if K-12 high-ability clustering were on the table.
All the status quo does is ensure that only gifted kids with rich parents (and a handful of scholarship students) at the Hackleys and Horace Manns get 13 years of education tailored to their needs, and the rest of Westchester's significantly high-potential students languish in inclusive classrooms that needs must focus on the slower students. Not exactly the way to prepare the next generation of brilliant minds who will, say, guard our critical election infrastructure against foreign intrusion or make sure America and not China wins the AI race.
This being Westchester, these districts surely have nontrivial numbers of students 3 and more standard deviations from the mean as well. Here we find young learners in the >99.9th percentile territory, which "fully" inclusive schools simply don't know what to do with. At least with gifted clustering and specialized teachers, these kids would stand a shot at receiving an appropriate, challenging education from Kindergarten on. Anything else is wasting taxpayers money.
Last edited by entropywins; 10-11-2017 at 06:13 PM..
So all jobs that don't leave you $8,000/mo after tax sitting around to send two kids to private school are not real?
But you're really making my point for me. Parents who call public g&t programs inegalitarian or elitist, are actually ensuring that only the high-potential children who happen to have parents among the elite will obtain education appropriate to their abilities.
And not even all of the gifted rich kids will land those coveted spots.
Of the five total K-12 private schools within commuting distance that are arguably worth the $45K/yr tuition (HM, Riverdale, Fieldston, Hackley, Rye Country Day- and that list may be overly generous), that's ~120 kindergarten spots total. Not nearly enough to accept every qualified applicant.
Hold on - your kid is what, 2 or 3 years old right now? But you already know she's gifted? You're already looking for gifted programs? Geez. I think you're putting the cart before the horse.
Hold on - your kid is what, 2 or 3 years old right now? But you already know she's gifted? You're already looking for gifted programs? Geez. I think you're putting the cart before the horse.
NYC administers its gifted placement exam at age 4, for the 300 spots in citywide gifted kindergarten programs (NEST, Anderson, etc). Psychologists can assess toddlers, and general intelligence scores are actually highly stable throughout life.
The strongest predictor of an individual's general intelligence assessment is biological parents' IQ. Studies on adoptive twins indicate that IQ is predicted more by genetics than by environmental or socioeconomic factors. Obviously there are exceptions, and regression to the mean, but the degree of correlation is similar to height.
It's controversial for some reason. Nobody has a problem accepting that traits like athletic ability are also unevenly distributed, and influenced more by genetics than by environment or socioeconomic status.
Last edited by entropywins; 10-24-2017 at 12:39 PM..
Not sure inheriting general intelligence is controversial. In any event, if you do feel like your child is gifted he/she wouldn't have a problem getting into one of the elite school mentioned earlier in the thread at a affordable price for your family. Almost any school, with the exception extremely failing school, would notice if your child is gifted. However, we're talking about 1 million here, so I wouldn't worry about it --- even if you and your partner are both math Phds.
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