[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.