OMG. I'm starting to believe hawkeye

Yeah, I don't know if that definition is correct.

The study cites gifted programs and advance placement programs as tracking.

I don't see any mention of being segregated all the time. It doesn't mention the amount of time spent in these programs at all. It's the very existence of the programs that establishes tracking practices.

I remember how important a school was in your deciding where to live in your new city. I'm so happy it has worked out so well, not just for you, but for all those families with the schools you refer to.

I'm not arguing against TAG/AP. I don't know enough about them to argue about them.

I'm just reporting what I've read and how those people define TAG and AP.

They define it as tracking.

I don't think they do, though, from what I've read thus far.

Can you quote something specific?

All I've seen so far (and I'm admittedly rushed, checking in while cooking dinner) is exactly in line with all the other stuff I was reading about tracking right around then (I got my M.Ed in 1996). And tracking = the definition above.

Kids being in a gifted track (being in classes with other gifted kids for significant chunks of time if not all the time) is much different from gifted programs as we're talking about them here.

Segregation, on an ongoing basis, is one of the central issues with tracking (pro and con). (The pro argument is that it allows teachers to better customize teaching rather than trying to reach a variety of skill levels at once.)

Yes boomer, in a way it is tracking.
I believe it started already when Jane was in first grade. Her class was divided
in three groups for math and reading. The teachers rotated with the groups and occasionally the kids were moved to different groups. No one knew which group was advanced among the kids, but the ones who could read more fluently figured that out all by themselves.

Honestly, as long as there is room for improvement so that kids can advance
to AP classes if needed, I don't really see a problem with it.

In Germany, kids are definitely tracked. By grade 4 they, resp. the parents
have to decide already for a higher school system. These children receive
an entirely different curriculum from 5th grade on and it's nearly impossible
for students who were left behind in the regular school system, to advance
into the higher school as the curriculum is so much more advanced.

Responding to myself, when I said somewhat luxurious, I meant school costs so damned much, it is now - to many - something of a luxury to have the vast money ($200,000.? for some universities) go to nada in terms of getting a job. Particularly this year.
I see this as short sighted, but can understand thinking that.

I want to add that I went to an ordinary catholic grade school, basically pretty wonderful from my child's eye view; went to a strict girls' catholic high school, at some meal money taking expense for my family, a school that became part of some later rage on my part; went to a small catholic college for one year, which was redemptive in that those people were sane; then went to UCLA, with thousands upon thousands of students and many departments. It was walking into a whole world as a splash. I remember thinking there was nothing I couldn't learn there.

Of course that's not true, but it was how I felt, even when I was down for some reason or other, like the D in physics (which was actually good news).

I'm adding all this to bring up the library system. I think there were thirteen libraries then. Like I said, nothing I could find and learn, in my view.



Alas, this year, they closed the art library, for apparent financial reasons.
This kills me. I didn't spend time there as an undergraduate, but I did when I worked at the university.

I can't pull quotes out because it's a PDF file.

This study is of high schools so it's really hard to know how it might translate to elementary school TAG programs.

My niece did a lot of AP courses in high school but she also took a lot of PE and art that weren't AP classes so she wasn't with the AP kids all the time.

My nephew was put into some TAG deal called Vanguard when he was in (I think) 4th grade. My sister was so disgusted by it that she pulled him out and homeschooled him instead. (It should be noted that she can out liberal any liberal I've ever met and thinks just about every division of society smacks of classism.)

So I guess I don't really see the difference between TAG/AP and tracking.

Wow! Interesting but crazy sounding. How old are kids at grade 4 in Germany? 9 or 10, like here?

Best. Sentence. Ever.

My grammar school classes, sometimes amazingly large, were taught by one nun, all of us of all sorts of quirks and abilities lined up in desk rows. I didn't know differently. I remember people popping up as swift in different areas, maybe just in humor. I could name a name, a gawky boy who was, er, slow. This was before the era(s) of diagnoses. He could be funny, and the class liked him, in my memory, wishing him well. In general, I don't remember much antipathy floating around in the air.

In high school, we were differentiated by what classes we chose, and that was a kind of caste system.

I've spoken before of a cousin who failed latin 1 a few times. (She turned out to be dyslexic and went through college by tape recorder.) You met her, CJ. She also kicked ass in math, with a perfect math score in the SAT.

What am I getting at.. I liked the mix in grammar school better, but I can see the sense of breaking classes down into interests/abilities. But.. hey, I might have liked auto shop. I know I would have liked carpentry.

Life is really too short.

Yes, same age. It's not crazy really. Some kids are just not born to excel
and are much better off with a general education and then going into some vocational school.

Oof.

That cousin of mine was undoubtedly taken as stupid in the late forties and early and mid fifties. I might remember cautionary tones about that, not sure. Was dyslexia known about then? Not at my schools.

She's a c.p.a, retired from a very high level job. She has a smartie older sister, in the lettered sense. Wonder how that felt as a kid. I was between the two in age, more like older sister in abilities (and faults). The cousin I am talking about was great at athletics.

She has a son who had trouble in math of all things, given his parents.
He struggled and struggled and struggled in math.
I love the guy..
He's now a high school teacher. Primarily english classes. They made him a vice principal but he quit and went back to classes, didn't want a job as a reprimander.

She has another son who went to cal tech.

Soz, here's a blurb about the study from a different article:



I don't know if that helps explain what I read the study to mean but I thought I'd toss it out there.

Thanks Osso!

Boomer, yeah, I'm still rough (still haven't had enough time to read what I need to read and formulate a post I can really stand behind) but I think I'm figuring out that part of the disconnect is elementary school vs. high school.

When I was reading about this stuff in school, what was really horrifying me about tracking was tests being administered to kindergarteners (and this was before preschool was the new kindergarten) and they were then put in the "appropriate" track. For kindergarteners (and elementary schoolers in general), tracks meant that they were with other kids in that track throughout the day.

What this meant is that kids who might have enormous potential but who didn't have home advantages were put in a low track right off, before education had a chance to actually do anything. And they then were stuck in that low track, often throughout their school career.

There were studies with controls and stuff that showed that these same kids were able to do much better (not all, but a significant number) when they weren't tracked. (When they were in classes of mixed ability levels.)

OK, so that's all elementary school.

And that's where sozlet is now, elementary school. There isn't tracking going on in what I consider to be a meaningful way (the way I remember using it re: elementary school and the way Wikipedia defines it). She is getting supplementary services, just as kids in her class who have problems with reading and math get supplementary services. It's for the same basic reason -- the regular classroom curriculum needs to be supplemented to meet the needs of those two groups.

For the ones who are challenged by the regular classroom curriculum, the supplementation comes in the form of additional help. For the ones who are not sufficiently challenged by the regular classroom curriculum, the supplementation comes in the form of additional challenges.

In high school, this is all a little different. High schoolers take a variety of classes -- they're not in one classroom all day. What I'm not clear about yet is how much segregation there is in the high school version. Do they have gifted + talented classes daily and then their other classes (5 out of 6, say) are with kids who are not in the "gifted" track? Or are they with other "gifted" kids more of the time?

In my quick reading of the article (again, I have to do a thorough reading), it seemed to be complaining more about elites using their significant power to skew who is considered to be gifted, and implications thereof, than anything about gifted kids getting supplementary services per se. For example, in one part that I saw there was something about kids who had been put in the "gifted" track put in "regular" classes and then offered separate "challenge" classes along with other students who wanted to take that class. Some of the "non-gifted" students did especially well (90th percentile and above) while some of the "gifted" ones were as low as the 58th percentile. Nothing in particular is said about whether these challenge classes were good or evil -- the emphasis is then on how the parents of the kids in the "gifted" track tried to blame the non-white "non-gifted" students for their own kids' low scores. (Eek.)

An aside..

this is my sixth and seventh grade class, the one taught by Sister Mel, in the back.
She's the one who took us out for the occasional long recess to play baseball. I'm in the photo (aarrg) as is a decades long friend in the grade under mine, a then best friend whom I miss, some really good football players, or so we thought, and at least one brilliant person.

As I type, I have to look to find Chucky..
maybe that is why I enjoy Kicky so much.

I counted that as 49.

See if you can pick out who I thought of as brilliant. Oh, and Chucky's not in that photo upon studying.

50 kids in one class, with one teacher??? So I guess you did not learn anything right....because she had to spend all her time on confronting "bad " behaviour??

Today that grade level would be taught with about 24 at most, with an aid at least half the day, and if there are any mainstreamed special ed kids another aid just for that kid. And then the office staff would be called in sometimes too.

And after all that money spent the kids today probably still learn less than you did...

Got to add, the fellow who asked me to go to the movies, and we did, is in that photo, may he be well.

I'm not trying to pick on you but I hear this argument all the time and I think it is one of the absolutely sadest things I've ever heard anyone say.

To me it shows a lack of comprehension about what life is like for a kid with a disability. I would chop my body in half to prevent Mo from having to live one more day dealing with this crap. I'll wager that most parents of SpEd kids would. I don't think you're going to find a lot of TAG parents that feel that way.

When I hear people say this it makes me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.