My mother is the director of gifted education in a major midwestern city's public school district. She doesn't believe in evolution.
There are quotas for minorities. Many otherwise qualified students are denied acceptance because their places are reserved. And not just a few... many.
Logistically, kids need to be bused from other schools, but transportation is uncooperative and the schools resent the hassle. There is also an additional bureaucratic and testing cost. These costs are in addition to running the programs themselves, but _these_ costs specifically antagonize other political entities in the school district.
And of course... unlike special ed, teachers resent busing away their best students. They fight over dumping the worst, of course.
Politically (within the district) gifted education is a career for pariahs. They create hassle for the "normal" (aka "real") teachers and they have no power to deter neglect or abuse. The teachers and staff in the department are paid less than require more education than "real" teachers. This drives away the best teaching talent and firmly entrenches the some least ambitious teachers within the department.
The curriculum is a petri dish of all sorts of inane pet political agendas. Especially in science and math, the teachers don't know the subjects themselves, so these subjects simply aren't taught beyond a pre-packaged lesson plan.
The consequence: the most qualified students leave the district (if they can.) Instead of integration, communities become more and more segregated. Fact is, if you don't "segregate" special resources for the best within a community, the best will leave. School districts only have incentives to reduce segregation with their local district. But segregation is inevitable, and failing to deal with it merely bubbles the segregation to higher levels.
Hence, I'm writing this from Silicon Valley and not the midwest.
Update
So nerd education is the nerd of education.
If you were a nerd in school, and you remember how _you_ were treated, doesn't that seem like a plausible extrapolation?
You don't have to believe in evolution, you just have to be able to understand that the facts have supported this theory enough to the point in where you "believe" in anything else you're probably wrong. You don't think it is wrong for an instructor to hold such beliefs? I guess we should have doctors who don't believe in bacteria or scientists who believe in gravity.
The good days of Reddit anyways were when it was comprised of just computer scientists who happen to be Atheists.
What's with the trashing of reddit lately? Is it not the largest YC success?
I did post a negative comment and for that I apologize. I was just annoyed he did not read the article and his original, unedited post made that obvious(it was the first line of the essay above).
There are quotas for minorities. Many otherwise qualified students are denied acceptance because their places are reserved. And not just a few... many.
Logistically, kids need to be bused from other schools, but transportation is uncooperative and the schools resent the hassle. There is also an additional bureaucratic and testing cost. These costs are in addition to running the programs themselves, but _these_ costs specifically antagonize other political entities in the school district.
And of course... unlike special ed, teachers resent busing away their best students. They fight over dumping the worst, of course.
Politically (within the district) gifted education is a career for pariahs. They create hassle for the "normal" (aka "real") teachers and they have no power to deter neglect or abuse. The teachers and staff in the department are paid less than require more education than "real" teachers. This drives away the best teaching talent and firmly entrenches the some least ambitious teachers within the department.
The curriculum is a petri dish of all sorts of inane pet political agendas. Especially in science and math, the teachers don't know the subjects themselves, so these subjects simply aren't taught beyond a pre-packaged lesson plan.
The consequence: the most qualified students leave the district (if they can.) Instead of integration, communities become more and more segregated. Fact is, if you don't "segregate" special resources for the best within a community, the best will leave. School districts only have incentives to reduce segregation with their local district. But segregation is inevitable, and failing to deal with it merely bubbles the segregation to higher levels.
Hence, I'm writing this from Silicon Valley and not the midwest.
Update
So nerd education is the nerd of education.
If you were a nerd in school, and you remember how _you_ were treated, doesn't that seem like a plausible extrapolation?