[TraceWoodgrains]

It comes from a real place of privilege to claim schools holding advanced students back never happens. To name one specific example with the most capable, Miraca Gross ran a longitudinal study with children scoring above 180 on IQ tests and found stark differences in motivation, satisfaction, and accomplishment depending on their level of academic acceleration[1]. (Terence Tao was “Adrian” in this study and was one of the models of successfully educating an advanced student). Kids might do something more with math out of sheer boredom, or they might just devote their energy to Pokemon instead—believe me, it’s not just the below average students who feel the urge towards everything else you mention.

Every student, no matter how capable, benefits dramatically from instruction tuned to their level and ability. Claiming advanced students will take care of themselves is an absolute failure in an instructor’s duty of care towards them, an excuse to make the teacher feel better about not having the time, interest, or knowledge to provide proper instruction. There is no merit to the notion.

[1] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf

[bsder]

You are talking about a 4 sigma deviation. Really? Your objection to a curriculum is that it doesn't cater to the 1 in 50,000 child? A child that 90%+ of school districts will never see.

Sorry. That's not even close to being a valid argument.

> Every student, no matter how capable, benefits dramatically from instruction tuned to their level and ability.

Oh, I agree. And the research supports it. However, when you tally up the bill for 2 teachers per every 10 or fewer students to make that happen, suddenly everybody starts screaming and objecting.

And curriculum has no bearing on any of that.

[TraceWoodgrains]

Really, you’re objecting to rarity after the emphasis you presented? I went with 4 sigma because you claimed truly gifted kids would take care of themselves. As you note, you can’t get much more extreme than that. My point was to directly refute that specific claim of yours. The same principles absolutely apply for the one in a thousand, or one in a hundred, or one in twenty; they’re just proportionately less extreme for each.

[StanislavPetrov]

>However, when you tally up the bill for 2 teachers per every 10 or fewer students to make that happen, suddenly everybody starts screaming and objecting.

If you want to hear screaming and objecting, try to suggest that teachers need to be competent and tested in the areas in which they teach. Yes, if we had an entirely different educational system with an intelligent, competent teacher for every 5 students instead of a semi-literate, incompetent teacher with 30 kids in every classroom, some of these "reforms" might make more sense. But that isn't what we are seeing. Advanced math and gifted programs are being eliminated with the same semi-literate, incompetent teacher still responsible for 30 kids. Only now the few bright kids and the few kids who work very hard to excel will have no opportunity to do so. They will sit at the back of the class and scroll on their phones while the barely competent teacher struggles to crawl through a remedial lesson that the dumbest 10 kids in class cannot master. But we'll have equity when all of them are handed the same worthless diploma after 12 years.