you're right 150k in the bay, LA, NY, DC...that's wealthy, no way possible that could be middle class
That's taken from an article that defines middle-class as "up to double the median" in whatever city you're in.
So you can live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America, be earning DOUBLE the median income in that wealthy neighborhood, and still not consider yourself wealthy....because most other people around you are well-off too.
It's an exercise in begging the question. By that definition there are no wealthier neighborhoods, no better-off neighborhoods, your position in the middle class is solely defined by where you are relative to the people in your immediate vicinity.
Of course, if the definition meant anything then your "middle-class" $180k ass would turn around and advocate for people earning median incomes in my neighborhoods. But you prioritize policies that help the six-figure earnings in my city more than the policies that help the folk earning just $35k, even though the $35k folk are far closer to the median than the $150k folk are. That's why its disingenuous to define "middle-class" solely relative to your neighbors. Well-off cities are a real thing and the concerns of the $180k San Francisco resident are far closer to those of the wealthy Inglewood resident than they are to the median Inglewood resident.
so kids are not supposed to learn at a challenging pace, take harder classes, and have a class environment that's conducive to learning because fukk them kids? i've never said disruptive kids aren't worth saving you always jump from one thing meaning another. i've been 100% consistent in my posts arguing that every kid deserves access to a high quality free education. i want schools to be better across the board. having advanced classes doesn't mean discarding those who aren't, but you alway seem to dismiss the very real reality of a lack of learning/teaching going on at schools where classes are frequently disrupted.
1. Your primary argument for pulling out the gifted kids was that normal classes are too disrupted and they'd be fukked over to stay where they are.
2. That ignores that all the other kids you're leaving in those classes are fukked over WORSE by those same issues. How is that not dismissive of the rights of those kids?
Personally, I grew up in subpar school district with virtually zero tracking and went K-12 without taking a single class that was hard for me or given at a challenging pace. The vast majority of my classmates weren't going to go to college if they graduated at all and until my last couple years of high school most of my classes reflected that. And yet I still turned out okay and went on to a strong performance at an elite university.
Because my own home environment was stable and I was fukking gifted. And I saw the same shyt reflected in my own classrooms for most of the kids I taught.
"Gifted kids" (defined by our previous discussions as the ones who already test high early) with some form of home privilege more often than not turn out okay regardless of their classroom environment. The educational research behind tracking shows very minimal gains for them when they are placed into tracked classes. But the bulk of kids in these troubled schools don't fit into that category, and the kids who aren't gifted are impacted by the status quo far more than the high-testing kids are and are further negatively impacted by tracking. You have consistently dismissed that and it really bothers me.
furthermore, not sure how your program were organized but all of our schools had gifted classes, it wasn't an entire track, you still had some normal classes and because they were at each school - even the poorest/blackest/brownest - there wasn't some special wing of the school only catering to white/asian/affluent kids.
I didn't have any gifted courses or tracking in any of the schools I attended. The best school I taught at, with by far the best student outcomes relative to socioeconomic status, didn't have any gifted courses either. But there are numerous school districts that place the gifted kids into entirely different schools and many schools that track their gifted students into programs where they really will be in a different wing and will rarely or never interact in an academic course (math-science-english-history) with a non-gifted kid, sometimes not even sharing the same teachers.
Some of our discussions about gifted programs have been in that EXACT context, such as NYC testing programs that put the highest-testing little kids into entirely different elite schools than the poor kids attended, and those elite schools ended up being vastly more white/asian than the schools most of the disadvantaged kids attended. And you defended the continuation of such a system just as NYC was working to eliminate it.
you're literally wanting to 8-14 yr olds to learn less because it's their burden to inspire the other kids? ok
You're literally wanting far MORE 8-14 yr olds to learn less because fukk them poor kids, the gifted are more important.
And you're begging the question by assuming the select elite 8-14 yr olds will learn substantially more in a tracked program. As I've already pointed out, learning outcomes for those programs are only marginally better than the status quo and there are substantial positive impacts (both intellectual and social) that come from navigating a mixed environment which those students are far more equipped to take advantage of than most of the other kids in the school.
especially the bold