Anything by Julian Stanley (the founder of CTY and CTY SET). He was also a signatory on "mainstream science on intelligence" (as well as other signaturies on Mainstream Science on Intelligence). The CTY SET program (probably the most comprehensive national studies of talent and supports those who achieved 700+ subscore SATs in 7th grade) also is one of the most well-developed studies on the gifted [it has found that there are no diminishing reuturns to higher levels o fintelligence]. I heard they used to have an online community. I know a couple of people who went to CTY SET in WA.
Also DUKE TIP
Back issues of CTY imagine have been supportive of the gifted
Subotnik. Also Lubinski and Benbow
tokenadult in Minnesota [who used to frequent Art of Problem Solving] wrote a website called https://learninfreedom.org/ and homeschooled all his 5 children.
Over time they have also gotten influenced by "wokism" (UW Robinson Center and many other gifted programs [TJ also being a casualty] have become more "woke" now than they used to be, from what I heard).
Stanford EPGY also used to be way better, and CTY doesn't have the cultural capital it used to have (a lot of the cultural capital has now been replaced by programs like SPARC which are totally independent from the gifted education communities that Julian Stanley/Linda Gottfredson and Lubinski/Benhow hung out in [nevermind Halbert and Nancy Robinson of UW long ago])
No specific articles to recommend, but my biggest reaction to the list is that it's very focused on the US, or to a lesser extent the Anglosphere. Other countries are much more focused on tracking and streaming students, with China being the most obvious example.
A couple of the articles you posted reference China as an inspiration when it comes to teaching methods, and Chua's book talks about the experience of putting small children into the Chinese system for a short period, but I didn't see anything that addresses the level of ability-based segmentation in Chinese high schools.
I'm sure there must be plenty of research about the effect of Olympic classes / key-point high schools / academic-vocational distinction etc. This would be stronger evidence that looking at a handful of elite schools in the US because it's system-wide rather than based on a few outliers. It would also give some useful information on the downsides of the system in practice.
Also most of Europe really. Can’t think of a single European country where there’s only one type of “high school”, most have multiple with some being academic and some being vocationally focused.
Some things which have stuck in my head wrt to education
"an oddysean education" by Dominic Cummings. Politically controversial and a little scattered but has the true spirit of aspiration
"Enders game" - YA science fiction might fall outside a certain purview of social legitimacy, but painting any clear picture of a novel education system by a desperate/serious society is valuable
Oh "How Children Fail" by John Holt is an absolute must for this list, really clear, concise study of children's psychology running aground on the modern school system. Guy can *see* kids so clearly. Inspirational
Hey! Glad to have found you here, I have read some of your stuff on X/twitter. I'm an education reporter with a Substack focused on the science of learning called The Bell Ringer. This was great, we are thinking about similar things! https://hollykorbey.substack.com/
I was fascinated by the report on Kansas City's infinite money experiment. I am a public school teacher in Saint Louis and I'm trying to figure out what went wrong here (short answer: a lot), and Kansas City offers a funhouse mirror of our problems. I am worried that some of the conclusions the author proposed (merit pay, firing bad teachers, tying things to tests) were taken up in Saint Louis and failed for different reasons.
Saint Louis Public Schools were also a basket case in the 90s and 2000s, and their spending got out of control, but without the infinite money of Kansas City. In 2007 their debt got so bad that the state took over the district and imposed austerity. The salary scale that teachers across the nation use to get raises was frozen to get the debt down, but it has never been restarted. However, the union added a clause to its contract allowing the district to pay above the salary scale if it wanted, ostensibly to attract and retain teachers in hard to fill roles. The result is that teachers can call HR and negotiate their own salary, but no rules or system regulates who gets a good deal.
They also tried to introduce a program to control teacher quality that was once heralded as a model for the nation. They called it "The Saint Louis Plan, " a collaboration between the local teachers' union (the AFT-420) and the district. At first it focused on paying mentor teachers to support first year teachers, but they quickly added an accountability element which was tied to Obama's Race to the Top. The union started collaborating with the district to put "ineffective" teachers, even tenured ones, on Performance Improvement Plans and fire them if they did not improve. These systems were popular for a minute, but reformers quickly learned that bragging about firing tenured teachers was a political loser. They did not get the message in Saint Louis and reformers and union officials bragged about firing up to 7% of the teacher workforce through the plan. The union benefited from the direct payments and became enmeshed with the administration, especially since the district was shrinking and the state went right-to-work.
The district returned to financial stability in the early 2010s (they got a big segregation settlement too), but they never gave up on austerity. Leaders assumed the district would continue to bleed students and therefore lose funding, so they determined to hold onto their savings to ward off another state takeover. An ever-growing surplus would not convince them to restart the salary scale even as teachers protested and fled the district. Currently they have $240 million but still won't give teachers raises. They brag about having the highest starting salary in the state, but most teachers don't realize that all teachers make the same wage (unless they negotiate successfully with HR), so they leave after a few years when surrounding districts will pay them more.
When a new superintendent suggested spending down some of the surplus she was quickly fired. The admin and the union are bent on keeping their coffers full as the district continues to shrink. It is a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy, since the bad schools keep people from starting families in Saint Louis, which ensures that the student population keeps dropping. The district has become famously secretive and hostile to its own workers. Teach for America pulled out of the city because its teachers were getting harassed. Attendance and test fraud is widespread. The chance to get good pay and treatment based on knowing people in the union and HR means bad people thrive and form networks. Everyone else leaves for the higher paying neighboring districts.
There's a lot more to the story, but I think the two cities offer competing visions of what can go wrong with reform. Throwing money at a poor district won't solve its problems, but neither will well-intentioned reforms that bad actors can hijack. Follow through and good school governance are a must. Any reform needs to be tracked and abandoned if it does not work as predicted. No silver bullets.
I've been trying to write a bit about it. Here's my attempt at a short history since the takeover with a lot of links if anyone is interested in digging deeper:
This is awesome to stumble across. I have independently found Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and the Art of Problem Solving curriculums and used them to great success with my kids. Would love more examples like this of truly exceptional curricula and teaching methodologies.
LOOK UP SENG!!
I would also add:
Anything by Julian Stanley (the founder of CTY and CTY SET). He was also a signatory on "mainstream science on intelligence" (as well as other signaturies on Mainstream Science on Intelligence). The CTY SET program (probably the most comprehensive national studies of talent and supports those who achieved 700+ subscore SATs in 7th grade) also is one of the most well-developed studies on the gifted [it has found that there are no diminishing reuturns to higher levels o fintelligence]. I heard they used to have an online community. I know a couple of people who went to CTY SET in WA.
Also DUKE TIP
Back issues of CTY imagine have been supportive of the gifted
Subotnik. Also Lubinski and Benbow
tokenadult in Minnesota [who used to frequent Art of Problem Solving] wrote a website called https://learninfreedom.org/ and homeschooled all his 5 children.
Rena Subotnik’s Genius Revisited:
High IQ Children Grown Up (Subotnik, Kassan,
Summers, & Wasser, 1993
This is old but might have a few gems: https://inquilinekea-education-disruption.quora.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20090208094253/http://earlyentrance.org/Comparison_Chart (old comparison of early entrance programs).
https://robinsoncenter.uw.edu/research-resources/publications/
Cognito Mentoring
Over time they have also gotten influenced by "wokism" (UW Robinson Center and many other gifted programs [TJ also being a casualty] have become more "woke" now than they used to be, from what I heard).
Stanford EPGY also used to be way better, and CTY doesn't have the cultural capital it used to have (a lot of the cultural capital has now been replaced by programs like SPARC which are totally independent from the gifted education communities that Julian Stanley/Linda Gottfredson and Lubinski/Benhow hung out in [nevermind Halbert and Nancy Robinson of UW long ago])
Read some Nan Waldman answers on Quora.
No specific articles to recommend, but my biggest reaction to the list is that it's very focused on the US, or to a lesser extent the Anglosphere. Other countries are much more focused on tracking and streaming students, with China being the most obvious example.
A couple of the articles you posted reference China as an inspiration when it comes to teaching methods, and Chua's book talks about the experience of putting small children into the Chinese system for a short period, but I didn't see anything that addresses the level of ability-based segmentation in Chinese high schools.
I'm sure there must be plenty of research about the effect of Olympic classes / key-point high schools / academic-vocational distinction etc. This would be stronger evidence that looking at a handful of elite schools in the US because it's system-wide rather than based on a few outliers. It would also give some useful information on the downsides of the system in practice.
Also most of Europe really. Can’t think of a single European country where there’s only one type of “high school”, most have multiple with some being academic and some being vocationally focused.
Some things which have stuck in my head wrt to education
"an oddysean education" by Dominic Cummings. Politically controversial and a little scattered but has the true spirit of aspiration
"Enders game" - YA science fiction might fall outside a certain purview of social legitimacy, but painting any clear picture of a novel education system by a desperate/serious society is valuable
Oh "How Children Fail" by John Holt is an absolute must for this list, really clear, concise study of children's psychology running aground on the modern school system. Guy can *see* kids so clearly. Inspirational
If sci-fi is a valid reference, ought to be comprehensive about it: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/scisociety2.php#id--Intelligence_Amplification--Speed_Learning
Hey! Glad to have found you here, I have read some of your stuff on X/twitter. I'm an education reporter with a Substack focused on the science of learning called The Bell Ringer. This was great, we are thinking about similar things! https://hollykorbey.substack.com/
I was fascinated by the report on Kansas City's infinite money experiment. I am a public school teacher in Saint Louis and I'm trying to figure out what went wrong here (short answer: a lot), and Kansas City offers a funhouse mirror of our problems. I am worried that some of the conclusions the author proposed (merit pay, firing bad teachers, tying things to tests) were taken up in Saint Louis and failed for different reasons.
Saint Louis Public Schools were also a basket case in the 90s and 2000s, and their spending got out of control, but without the infinite money of Kansas City. In 2007 their debt got so bad that the state took over the district and imposed austerity. The salary scale that teachers across the nation use to get raises was frozen to get the debt down, but it has never been restarted. However, the union added a clause to its contract allowing the district to pay above the salary scale if it wanted, ostensibly to attract and retain teachers in hard to fill roles. The result is that teachers can call HR and negotiate their own salary, but no rules or system regulates who gets a good deal.
They also tried to introduce a program to control teacher quality that was once heralded as a model for the nation. They called it "The Saint Louis Plan, " a collaboration between the local teachers' union (the AFT-420) and the district. At first it focused on paying mentor teachers to support first year teachers, but they quickly added an accountability element which was tied to Obama's Race to the Top. The union started collaborating with the district to put "ineffective" teachers, even tenured ones, on Performance Improvement Plans and fire them if they did not improve. These systems were popular for a minute, but reformers quickly learned that bragging about firing tenured teachers was a political loser. They did not get the message in Saint Louis and reformers and union officials bragged about firing up to 7% of the teacher workforce through the plan. The union benefited from the direct payments and became enmeshed with the administration, especially since the district was shrinking and the state went right-to-work.
The district returned to financial stability in the early 2010s (they got a big segregation settlement too), but they never gave up on austerity. Leaders assumed the district would continue to bleed students and therefore lose funding, so they determined to hold onto their savings to ward off another state takeover. An ever-growing surplus would not convince them to restart the salary scale even as teachers protested and fled the district. Currently they have $240 million but still won't give teachers raises. They brag about having the highest starting salary in the state, but most teachers don't realize that all teachers make the same wage (unless they negotiate successfully with HR), so they leave after a few years when surrounding districts will pay them more.
When a new superintendent suggested spending down some of the surplus she was quickly fired. The admin and the union are bent on keeping their coffers full as the district continues to shrink. It is a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy, since the bad schools keep people from starting families in Saint Louis, which ensures that the student population keeps dropping. The district has become famously secretive and hostile to its own workers. Teach for America pulled out of the city because its teachers were getting harassed. Attendance and test fraud is widespread. The chance to get good pay and treatment based on knowing people in the union and HR means bad people thrive and form networks. Everyone else leaves for the higher paying neighboring districts.
There's a lot more to the story, but I think the two cities offer competing visions of what can go wrong with reform. Throwing money at a poor district won't solve its problems, but neither will well-intentioned reforms that bad actors can hijack. Follow through and good school governance are a must. Any reform needs to be tracked and abandoned if it does not work as predicted. No silver bullets.
I've been trying to write a bit about it. Here's my attempt at a short history since the takeover with a lot of links if anyone is interested in digging deeper:
https://stlteach.substack.com/p/the-history-of-the-aft-420-and-saint?r=u6yuq
Also highly recommended: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1
Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival
A free volume by an international team of experts
Very timely book: https://curriculumredesign.org/our-work/education-for-the-age-of-ai/
This is awesome to stumble across. I have independently found Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and the Art of Problem Solving curriculums and used them to great success with my kids. Would love more examples like this of truly exceptional curricula and teaching methodologies.