[dolni]

It makes sense to group people for education based on ability. If a low performer is in a class of high performers, one of two things will likely happen:

* the low performer will be left behind, because the course moves too quickly or sets the bar beyond their abilities

* the class will have to be dumbed down so that the low performer can participate, which means that the high performers haven't realized their full potential

That said, I take your general point about Ivy Leagues and I am curious to know if we can come up with an objective way of comparing them to other schools. As a prerequisite, you would need a way to measure someone's ability before and after admission.

[adamhp]

> It makes sense to group people for education based on ability

Ability to do what exactly? Your premise is based on this idea of "performance" as if it that is easily measurable or is some innate quality of a person. Performance is a function of the system itself though.

Speaking from the perspective of someone in the United States: I didn't "perform well enough" in middle school and so got ignored by staff and counselors in high school, so then "underperformed" there as well.

I got lucky and had a peer mentor me and help me figure out the importance of education. I went to community college and transferred to a top tier public university and went on to get a Master's degree, and now I am a high earning, tax paying, productive member of society. Could just be another "underperformer", but I lucked out and received someone else's empathy.

We should be seeking to build a system that works for a variety of learner's, a variety of life situations, and a variety of subjects. We certainly have the technology and we understand that it isn't as simple as "high performers" and "low performers".

[thatfrenchguy]

Same here. It sounds to me like every test trying to measure "ability" ends up testing for a specific kind of ability instead of the presence of ability in general.

US college admissions today are basically a joke though, given universities mostly admit upper-middle class kids with perfect grades who can write an essay where they pretend that their life was hard.

[dolni]

I think we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, here. Yes, ability measurement is sort of fuzzy and it's not perfect. It at least gives you a starting point.

There would be no doubt in anybody's mind that we shouldn't take a kid whose mathematical abilities are counting to 10, and adding and subtracting one digit numbers, and toss them into a calculus course.

So given that there is some boundary, that ability is meaningful in _some_ way, we can start to narrow it down. We can think about methods for measuring ability. What knowledge and understanding is required before you can tackle algebra II?

Again, not perfect, but certainly necessary and better than nothing.

[the_only_law]

> US college admissions today are basically a joke though, given universities mostly admit upper-middle class kids with perfect grades who can write an essay where they pretend that their life was hard.

I didn’t pursue a bachelors after high school. For a couple reasons I regret this now and tried to apply to a handful of state schools.

One thing that felt very clear to me was that if you don’t fit that archetype, they don’t really want you. I have a feeling they cared more about my high school discipline record than my industry and open source experience.

[nine_k]

Ability (not innate, but current) to learn a particular set of things. How well you are prepared, motivated, and maybe even have some innate bonus points.

This ability may vary wildly across subjects (maths vs biology vs history), and with time (acute cases of interest / commitment, or distracting factors like romance or gaming).

In any case, batching people by the level of current ability is helpful. This is a complete opposition to typical public schools, which batch kids by age and zip code. No wonder many of them dislike it and underachieve.

[adamhp]

> Ability (not innate, but current) to learn a particular set of things. How well you are prepared, motivated, and maybe even have some innate bonus points.

Again, you have kind of a chicken-and-egg problem here. Ability is typically measured by standardized testing, which is a poor proxy. The same way engineering interviews are a poor proxy for actually measuring engineering ability or ability to add value as an SDE.

Unfortunately, measuring ability this way also captures your socioeconomic status, family stability, medical conditions, and many other things that adversely impact your "ability" to perform well on a standardized test.

We could argue it's not on Princeton or other institutions to account for that, but as a society I think we could probably do better in that regard, by offering a variety of solutions to this complex problem.

[tomp]

Noone said that you need to forcefully segregate people based on ability. You don't even need to measure it!

Just offer different classes, with different difficulties. Some people will be bored and go to more advanced classes, others will struggle and move to less advanced classes.

There's actually a well-organised system that almost does this - primary school! Except that there, people are forcefully grouped by age, when there's really no need for that. That's (one of the reasons) why I advocate for mixed-age education.

[rajin444]

How do you know you wouldn't have ended up where you are without a mentor? There's no control here. AFAIK twin studies provide the best insight we can get within ethical means.

[adamhp]

That's true, and it's a fair question to be asking, generally speaking. It is certainly possible, but I sincerely doubt it was more likely than the alternative.

Intuitively, I would wager those who receive support from others typically fare better in most ways—whether that is familial relationships, mentorship, or peers. I did a quick search, and depending on how we're defining "success", there are a number of studies.

[endisneigh]

I'll have to find the research, but this generally is not true (at least with K-12).

From my recollection in general what happens is that there's a certain ratio in which low performers and high performers interact. If the ratio is stacked towards high performers in general the low performers end up doing significantly better than they would've if they were in a group consisting of people entirely like them.

This would suggest that societally there's some ratio that's optimal such that we intentionally put in "low performers" as a mechanism to raise their performance. As long as this is done very carefully it simultaneously increases the performance of low performers and maintains the potential of high performers.

Conversely if you have too many low performers and put in a high performer, not only is their potential not met, but it's generally detrimental.

In other words there's a sort of "force" pulling everyone to the mean. The "dilution" that results from adding high or low performers to an otherwise low or high performing group depends on how high or low they are and the group itself. With data this can be optimized such that low performers exceed their potential. Given the rate of change for low performers vastly exceeds high performers inherently, this is the societally optimal outcome.

That being said K-12 education isn't like higher ed is that it's lower level (intellectually).

[dolni]

Good K-12 schools _do_ batch people by ability, though. The inner city schools -- the ones that are struggling, they do a poor job putting underperforming students into remedial courses. They similarly do a poor job putting high performing students into honors and AP/IB courses.

Measuring ability is tricky, which is why schools rely on grades for prerequisite courses. As a simple, contrived example: you can't really learn how to add if you don't even know your numbers yet.

I think you're right on about K-12 being lower level is also a massive factor. I coasted through K-12, personally. I know a lot of people who did. But college kicked my ass in a lot of ways. I would argue that for higher education, matching courses to ability is _even more_ important because what you're studying is that much more difficult.

[endisneigh]

Which good schools are you thinking of? Most schools don't really do any analysis to show that they're good or not. The others are either exam schools or schools in areas that are expensive. Given the correlation between socioeconomic status and school performance, that's also just selection bias.

I'm not necessarily against tracking (which is what we're describing) - but when you have a fixed number of resources and a mentality that the best should get more resources all you really end up with is a situation where the poor students are setup to fail.

Grades pretty much exist because we decided that they need to be out of the traditional school system by 20 or so (in most school systems you can only be held back a couple of times). I disagree with grades in general but that's another discussion.

[dolni]

> Which good schools are you thinking of? Most schools don't really do any analysis to show that they're good or not. The others are either exam schools or schools in areas that are expensive. Given the correlation between socioeconomic status and school performance, that's also just selection bias.

This isn't really a scientific analysis, just basing that on my own lived experience and what I've learned from other people over the years.

I went to an inner city school. Inner city schools here offer fewer honors courses as compared to their suburban counterparts. My experience generally is that people who went to suburban schools are better educated. Suburban schools have higher graduation rates and kids get into college with more college credits than their urban peers.

> I'm not necessarily against tracking (which is what we're describing) - but when you have a fixed number of resources and a mentality that the best should get more resources all you really end up with is a situation where the poor students are setup to fail.

Well yeah, I think we're in complete agreement that some schools just don't have enough resources to do what they need to do. The goal should be for every child to realize their full potential. For some kids, that means you need to move a little slower. For others, that means you need to challenge them.

> Grades pretty much exist because we decided that they need to be out of the traditional school system by 20 or so (in most school systems you can only be held back a couple of times). I disagree with grades in general but that's another discussion.

I dunno, I think they are a useful metric for gauging ability in general terms. Not perfect. But I've yet to really see anything better.

[gugagore]

I think it's more interesting not to take for granted that this grouping (often called "tracking" in K-12) makes obvious sense.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108013/chapters/What-...

> Do students differ in talents and achievement? They do. But when those observed differences are reinforced by track placement and grouping practices, and children then internalize those differences, learning opportunities become limited for all but the elite student. The talents of late bloomers go undiscovered, and the rewards of hard work and diligent study are never realized.

> As our school district began its detracking reform, we began to pay attention to our language. Language shapes our thinking and our beliefs. We began with the word "ability" and made a conscious effort to replace it with "achievement." Thus, we write about, study, and talk about students who are lower achievers or higher achievers. Achievement is a measurable construct that describes what a student knows at a given point in time; ability implies an innate quality that cannot change and that limits success. As we made this commitment personally, we shared it with our faculty. Our language began to change, and so did the way we viewed students. Discussions about the labels placed on students and the beliefs they represent can help a faculty that is embarking on a detracking reform question constructs and practices that they have taken for granted. Being conscious of our own language can help us understand how deeply ingrained the culture of student sorting is. Language awareness is also likely to help uncover other justifications for tracking.

> Both students and adults mistake labels such as "gifted," "honors student," "average," "remedial," "LD" and "MMR" for certification of overall ability or worth. These labels teach students that if the school does not identify them as capable in earlier grades, they should not expect to do well later. Everyone without the "gifted" label has the de facto label of "not gifted." The resource classroom is a low status place and students who go there are low status students. The result of all this is that most students have needlessly low self-concepts and schools have low expectations. Few students or teachers can defy those identities and expectations. These labeling effects permeate the entire school and social culture.

[dolni]

To be blunt, this sounds like a lot of flowery-language bullshit that isn't backed by anything.

Anybody who has been through education has observed that there are the people who "get it" and the people who struggle. And similarly, if you take an expert in some field and have them start explaining concepts to a random person that are at the very edge of the expert's knowledge, said person will be completely lost. This is a real thing we all can relate to.

The idea that "we all can do it" because "we're all equals" is doing a disservice to the kids who struggle. You better prepare them by putting them in courses that are matched to their level and challenge them appropriately.

You can't take someone who weighs 600 lbs, say "okay, go run a marathon" and expect success. Even if that person really wants to suceed. What you can do is train them in a way that is tailored to them, and eventually they may be able to run that marathon.

One idea I agree with is that we should evaluate kids more regularly to see how their abilities change over time. If they show improvement, their coursework should be adjusted accordingly. But all this "not sorting" kids stuff? That's just nonsense.

[gugagore]

> Anybody who has been through education has observed that there are the people who "get it" and the people who struggle.

I've been through education, and my take-away is that it's quite a bit more nuanced than that dichotomy. Get what? Struggle with what?

> The idea that "we all can do it" because "we're all equals" is doing a disservice to the kids who struggle. You better prepare them by putting them in courses that are matched to their level and challenge them appropriately.

Strawman. The idea isn't simply "everyone is equal". The literal first thing I quote mentions differences.

> To be blunt

> But all this "not sorting" kids stuff? That's just nonsense.

Careful not to confuse being blunt with being upset and stubborn! Or maybe you just really like the hat in Harry Potter!

[dolni]

> I've been through education, and my take-away is that it's quite a bit more nuanced than that dichotomy. Get what? Struggle with what?

Seems like a bit of a bad faith take here. Of course I didn't mean that there "are kids who are good at school and kids who suck" and that's it. Some kids are really strong in a particular subject. Some kids really struggle in a particular subject.

Growing up, we have all observed peers who are in say, math class, and kids seem to grasp every new concept that is taught intuitively. There are others who seem to struggle with everything. There is also the wide range in between.

> Strawman. The idea isn't simply "everyone is equal". The literal first thing I quote mentions differences.

It does mention differences, and then follows up with something to the effect of "well if we only didn't take note of their differences, and try to give them appropriately challenging coursework, they would do better!" As if to imply that really they're not that different. They are just as capable and the difference is mostly a result of reinforcing their ability by track placement.

It's flowery language. Some people are dumb, some people are geniuses, and most people are just mediocre. It's not fair, but that is the way life is.

> Careful not to confuse being blunt with being upset and stubborn! Or maybe you just really like the hat in Harry Potter!

No need to assume my emotional state here now. No ill-will was intended -- that text just rang my bullshit alarm and was woefully unconvincing to me, that's all. Sorry if I offended you.

Any time somebody writes things that presume to understand the myriad factors in someone's psyche, and how particular words are impacting them or not, need to show up with a mountain of evidence. There are way too many factors at play, and way too little evidence for such a bold claim to stand up to any scrutiny.

[gugagore]

> It's flowery language. Some people are dumb, some people are geniuses, and most people are just mediocre. It's not fair, but that is the way life is.

What you are dismissing as "flowery language" appears to be a different epistemology from yours. I cannot reconcile "there is a wide range in between" with these concrete categories you are giving.

If you believe in these categories wholeheartedly, then it makes sense to figure out the true category a person is in. It is wholly consistent to believe that you cannot ever know with complete certainty the true category someone is in, but that there is some underlying truth. You can imagine measurements that provide information about those categories (no one seriously believes a test could directly detect such a thing, however).

I am confident that I understand the appeal of that worldview. It certainly is tidy (maybe this is the bluntness you speak of)! But I have a different take on education, and the purpose of education. I do not see myself arguing in bad faith. If you can express your worldview without so heavily relying on [ad hoc] dichotomies and categories, then I will respond to that.

[dolni]

What I believe is this: people are complex creatures with sophisticated brains. Measuring "ability" objectively is nigh-impossible for a lot of things, but it's not impossible to get a general sense of someone's ability in a particular field.

> What you are dismissing as "flowery language" appears to be a different epistemology from yours. I cannot reconcile "there is a wide range in between" with these concrete categories you are giving.

Think about it like this: there is a color gradient that transitions from blue on the left, to purple in the middle, to red on the right, smoothly. If I point to the leftmost part of the color gradient and ask people what color it is, they would say "blue". Likewise for the right, they would say "red".

In the middle it gets a little more tricky. If start on the left and move in a touch, most people will probably say blue. Move a bit further and some people might say purple, and others blue (would anybody say red? probably not). Move further and now you're in pretty solid purple consensus territory, though you might get the odd person claiming red or blue. You get what I'm trying to say.

There absolutely are children who are "blue" or "red". There aren't a lot, but they are there. Most are purple, and sometimes you can get a sense for whether they're more bluish-purple or reddish-purple. The analogy isn't perfect, because ability is a multidimensional and complex but I think it applies fairly well if you limit your gauge of "red" or "blue" to particular subject matters.

I agree with your assertion that you can't know _everybody's_ category with complete certainty. There are some whose ability or lack of is very apparent, and others that require a bit more inspection.

> You can imagine measurements that provide information about those categories (no one seriously believes a test could directly detect such a thing, however).

A test is one way to help gauge it. But some people are poor test takers. A test doesn't account for someone not sleeping well the night before, or having recently experienced something traumatic. Tests can't effectively differentiate between rote memorization and real understanding, in a lot of cases. You need a good educator to provide a bit more context if you _really_ want to know.

And that's really what it comes down to. Context is everything here. A letter grade can't really tell you if a student is overwhelmed or unmotivated.

I think, when it comes to grades and tests, the outliers I described above will average out over time. A percentage grade alone is not sufficient to provide good direction for a child's education, but a low grade does a pretty decent job of letting you know that something is going wrong.

[kiba]

The higher classes are probably where the best resources and teachers are available.

Winners tend to win more.

[dolni]

Indeed. That's a legitimate, actionable concern.

I don't think this is something that is trivially solvable. I suspect (though don't know) that teachers are happier when they have gifted students than not. You'd feel like a success, even if you didn't really need to do much. I imagine teaching spots in honors courses would be coveted.

[decafninja]

Considering that there are legacy admissions, sports admissions, and students that get in because daddy & mommy donated a new wing to the library, etc. does it really matter? There are also students that are smart and capable, but just unmotivated, or going through life issues, etc.

Some people are there to just get a piece of paper that shows they graduated from a top school, regardless if their GPA was a A or a C; and that school name on that piece of paper could still open doors a lesser school might not.

It's kind of like FAANG. You could have an engineer with FAANG on their resume who otherwise did relatively unremarkable work. Another person has only no-name companies but has accomplished a lot. Yet the FAANG alumni is the one who will have recruiters and employers groveling to hire them, not the other guy.

[jjk166]

I don't think that assumption is valid if you look more closely at what is actually happening in a school.

Typically kids are learning a series of loosely related concepts that require different skillsets to process. If for one person integrals are intuitive but vectors are not, while for another vectors are intuitive while integrals are not, both would average roughly the same rate of learning, but you are still faced with the same dilemma - either you're slowing down to make sure the one student gets the concept they struggle with at the expense of the one who wasn't struggling or you move ahead quickly at the expense of the straggler. Both students would appear to be equal performers but that doesn't mean it made sense to group them together. While perhaps classes could be designed to have good correlation between concepts, you certainly couldn't do so for a well rounded education - there is absolutely no reason to believe someone who learns mathematical concepts quickly would also pick up literary concepts quickly. There may be small populations who do learn everything quickly and others that learn everything slowly, but certainly the overwhelming majority of the population would fall in-between.

[dolni]

Point taken and I agree with the examples you provided.

I would argue this is not quite the problem you make it out to be, because generally speaking, people tend to be strong or weak in a subject overall.

If you're generally good at math, getting tripped up by vectors is not a death knell for pursuing coursework at that level. But there is a massive divide between the ability of someone "generally good" at math and "generally bad" at math. Tests do a really good job of capturing that, actually.

[jjk166]

Yeah, the problem is more with the schools. At least until post-secondary education, you don't go to school for just a narrow range of subjects. You might be excellent at math but does that mean you can keep up with people who are excellent at history? Unless we expect people to hyperspecialize from a young age (which would have disastrous consequences), we need schools to be able to deal with people at various different levels of proficiency.

[dolni]

That does exist, but I think we could do a better job pre-high school. At least at the high school I went to (which wasn't highly regarded, or anything) there were remedial classes for kids who were behind, and honors classes for kids who excelled. You could opt-in to honors courses on a per-subject basis.

I think K-6 are where we struggle. At least that's my experience.