Its so weird how its okay to just say that parents are just too dumb to figure out how to get kids into gifted programs.
My parents literally didn't speak English and was only in the country for less than a decade after coming to the USA with a backpack and 20 dollars, and still figured out how to push me into gifted programs at a mediocre city school. It was study, do well on exams and read whatever was handed to me. I didn't even speak english w/ fluency until I was in the 3rd grade and I still did fine.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I do think most parents push for what’s best for their child regardless of any circumstance. At the same time, I feel the immigrant success story unintentionally hides the effects of structural and historical racism.
For some 85-90% of Black Americans, the comparison would be: “My family has been here for centuries. My great-great grandparents were slaves. My great grandparents and grandparents were physically, violently terrorized in the face of social, economic and political pursuit. It’s only been 65 years that anyone in my family has had their Constitutional rights legally guaranteed. Nonetheless having no cultural origins outside of the U.S. and no apparent choices for fleeing this persecution, my parents figured out how to push me into gifted programs at a mediocre school district.”
How the immigrant experience and descendant-of-slave experience compares in terms of hardship doesn’t matter. But I think it’s important to call out that your parents were seeking a better place to build a life, whereas most Black Americans are seeking to build a something better in a society that has shunned them the majority of its existence. That has an effect... not in making Black parents dumb, but wary and highly cynical.
I’m guessing this will get downvoted, but it’s for context, not whataboutism.
So which is it, parents are too dumb to figure out how to get their kids into gifted programs which is why the school wants to change the rules, or parents are deliberately sacrificing their kids education.
Also the word MOST is doing some pretty goddamn heavy lifting here. DO you have something to back up the claim?
Gifted programs are largely NOT tailored to the students because they are still pegged to the grade level. They are mostly pricey busy-work masquerading as education.
Might be fun to answer this question very literally.
Set up a world simulation with two nations. In one nation parents are rewarded a great deal for investing in making their kids maximally educated/capable/productive, through the better opportunities and status they win for their children. In another, just turn that dial down and reward parents who do that a little less. The simulated nations are in all other respects equal.
Nation one will always outcompete nation two. Because of compounding effects, eventually the difference between the two nations will be very large. Nation one will ultimately subsume nation two and set its policy equal to nation one’s. So that’s why.
In a third nation, there's a government program that identifies high-achievers without parental input. They have a larger, less biased, field of kids to choose from, and therefore end up identifying and raising up kids that would have been passed over in the system that depends on the parents doing the right things. Since this leads to a larger pool to pick high achievers from, they end up outcompeting the country picking over achievers only from those with additional class advantages.
That's a straw-man, and I think you know it. I said nothing about isolating children from their parents. I also didn't call parents 'dumb' for not knowing how to manipulate the system on their children's behalf, as you said in your other comment. Parents want the best for their children across the board, but have different ideas of what 'the best' might be, and different access to information and resources for getting there. That doesn't make them 'dumb,' and dismissing them as such means you're not asking questions about what other priorities and/or limitations might be in place. You're applying a label and deciding not to understand what might be behind it.
My point is that it's ultimately best to widen the mouth of the funnel to increase the chance of picking up high performers. I tend to think it's better to do this at an institutional level, for a variety of reasons.
As a point of reference, I think the California university system has done an excellent job historically of facilitating this kind of thing. The community colleges are cheap and widely accessible, and provide a solid, attainable path into R-1 and R-2 research universities for students who do well. This (and similar efforts to widen access to higher education) had a lot to do with the easy availability knowledge labor in the 70's and 80's throughout California, powering an economic boom and improving class mobility at the same time.
If the parents don't prioritize education, the kids won't, and whether they're naturally gifted/intelligent or not, they won't do the points listed above, and they won't end up in the programs.
Why should any paperwork be required? If the student has good scores, put them in the G&T program. You can send the student home with a piece of paper informing the parent, but there's no need to make it opt-in.
My parents literally didn't speak English and was only in the country for less than a decade after coming to the USA with a backpack and 20 dollars, and still figured out how to push me into gifted programs at a mediocre city school. It was study, do well on exams and read whatever was handed to me. I didn't even speak english w/ fluency until I was in the 3rd grade and I still did fine.