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Re: Finland
Posted:
Feb 15, 2012 7:29 AM
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On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Haim <hpipik@netzero.com> wrote:
> Furthermore, the attitude of the school psychologists fits hand-in-glove with the Prime Directive: Reduce The Gap. You can see the problem. If the schools allowed TAG children to work at their own pace, something like 5% of children will be done with K-12 by the time they are 14 yrs old (some even younger), others at 15 yrs and 16 yrs, and The Gap will simply blow up.
>
> BTW, one of the most important tools in the Ed Mafia armamentarium is the ceiling effect on tests. The ceiling effect can only work if you do not allow, say, 4th grade students to take 5th grade tests. If children were allowed to show their full range, and if tests were not so severely dumbed down, the already outrageous Gap in the performance of low and high achievers would be staggeringly worse. This is one of many reasons I have constantly maintained that, bad as the numbers are, the reality is much, much worse.
>
> Bob, you will not convince the school psychologists, the classroom teachers, the school administrators of the error of their ways. If you think they are wrong about TAG education, there is only one way out. However we do it, we have to pry the Education Mafia's hands off the throat of public education.
>
This "Ed Mafia" of yours must actually be in control of every public
AND private school system in every country in the world in all of
modern history, since this idea of having 5% of an entire population
finish the first 8-9 years of education is just 5-6 years (which is
what would happen if 5% of the entire population would finish 12 years
of school in just 8-9 years) has never actually happened in any public
OR private school system in any country in the world in all of modern
history.
Every country in modern history that has ever had such radically
accelerated programs for its gifted students applied that program to
its very most gifted, those with very high scores on aptitude tests,
cutoffs at roughly at least 4 standard deviations above the mean (for
an IQ test that would mean at least 160). See this large overview of
the research, including what some other countries do:
"Radical acceleration and early entry to college: A review of the research"
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10349.aspx
Quote: "Radical acceleration addresses the needs of students who can
move at an extremely fast pace through the prescribed school
curriculum. Where IQ is cited, these students are, in general,
exceptionally (IQ 160-179) or profoundly (IQ 180+) gifted."
This is a very, very tiny sliver of 1% of the population, orders of
magnitude smaller than this 5% figure above, which is pure fantasy.
(And yes, I am for having special programs for the gifted like we have
special education programs for the opposite end of the spectrum. But
you must understand that your taxes would have to go up quite a bit if
we were to spend as much for the gifted as we we spend for the
disabled. You are OK with your local and state taxes going up that
much to pay for all that? In other words, you would be willing to tell
conservatives running for state government that they should not sign
that no new taxes at all costs pledge? It's one thing to promote that
government should do this and that, but it's another thing to actually
be willing to pay for it.)
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