[mobilene]

I entered middle school in 1979, at which time I was slotted into available "advanced" classes. This was as close to a G&T program as we had. It changed my game. Not because of the knowledge imparted, but because (a) I was with other kids who wanted to learn and were willing to work, and (b) I was largely removed from the disruptions I had increasingly experienced from kids who didn't want to be there. At last, I could relax and just do school. It didn't make school a paradise, but it sure removed the worst of what was problematic for me about it. Freed from most of the nonsense, I was in a better head space and was able to do well.

[PaulKeeble]

A lesson runs at the pace of the slowest students, and those slowest students don't want to learn and actively disrupt the class and everyone else. We tolerate this far too much its damaging to the other 20-30 children in the same lessons and moving them to their own classes would have a much bigger average impact than picking the brightest for special lessons. Ideally we would do both so people could go closer to their pace.

[jjj123]

> and those slowest students don't want to learn

This is not a fair assumption and is what leads to kids in remedial classes not getting a decent education.

Kids can be genuinely disruptive or not care, or they can care but struggle with the material, those are orthogonal traits.

I don’t disagree that the lesson goes at the pace of the slowest students, but those slow students deserve a disruption-free classroom too, even if it moves slower than the advanced class.

[foogazi]

> and those slowest students don't want to learn and actively disrupt the class and everyone else.

Disrupting the class is something that can be proven

But I’m not sure about them not wanting to learn - maybe they end up not learning but how can you attribute it to a want ?

[burnt-resistor]

Interesting. CA GATE has little/no effect other than pulling me out of class to arrange triangles with a timer. The public high school I attended offered most AP classes (but was otherwise under-resourced), around ~15 perfect SAT-I results, and ~25 full scholarships to Ivy League schools per year. Not as fancy as a room full of IITians, but almost. Maybe there was some purpose for the G&T program other than bureaucratic pyramid-building or the specter of inventorying possibly intelligent people. Oh yeah, and I was bullied in middle school by a math teacher who encouraged the class to bully me as well who seemed to be offended at having a student added to her class.