alt Hacker News> I didn't say that; they said that to me. The fact that HP needs fewer resources is precisely why it's insane. It's exactly my complaint.
This is not at all obvious from your explanation. But also, between you and them, if I had to bet, I would say that they are way better positioned to know about resources that you do. They are the ones providing the resources, they are the ones doing the "accounting", they see, with their own eyes, what needs resource or not. Did you even consider that maybe they are right on this point?
> You still have the question of why is this large cohort of smart kids in class with kids who can't count to four? ... why aren't we teaching them at their level?
Did you do some research on this subject? Apparently, there is a lot of academic research there, and the conclusion is that grouping by levels is not as beneficial or as an obvious good idea as it seems.
Especially in young children, skills can vary very quickly and "smartness" is not one dimensional. Apparently the best recommendation is to have mixed class but with the teacher aware of the level of each kids. Which can perfectly be exactly what your school is doing: in which case, they are doing the best for your kid and you are pushing them to adopt something that is worse.
On top of that, you said that they say HP requires more resource. If it is the case, it means that having them all in one classroom may be impossible to manage. So, it would _hurt_ the HP classroom and be dragging everyone to the bottom.
> and therefore everybody just has to move at the bottom
I don't understand why you are saying this. Nothing in my argument have been about "moving to the bottom for the sake of some minority".
In my first message, I have done some math showing that, in the context where HP require more resource, it looks to me that YOUR proposal is moving everyone to the bottom.
In my second message, I argue that your proposal is based on what will be best for your child, and that another parent will ask for something different. No "moving to the bottom" there either.
What is happening is that you don't know much about the subject, but you have _decided_ that splitting classroom is "obviously" the best way to go, you've _decided_ that you better how resources are divided than people whose job is literally to provide the resource.
YOU are the one who come with a simplistic "good idea" that people have tested in past, studied, and concluded that it brings everyone to the bottom.
I have very deep lived personal experience with being a gifted child and having gifted children. I know what sorts of resources they need. And I'm quite sure that if you ask pretty much any gifted person if they would rather be in a room with a bunch of other gifted children and minimal adult attention, or be told to sit quietly or participate in some activities targeted several years lower than their current cognitive ability all day, that they will tell you they would rather have been with the other gifted children and minimal resources.
Like her freshly three-year-old sister is at a level more advanced than the class, and is apparently more of a cognitive peer than most of the classmates.
I think at this point the failings of the education system with respect to phonics are widely known enough that you can just discount professional opinion entirely. We're talking mass incompetence and failure. A complete disaster.
It's crazy to me that you're now arguing that I don't understand enough about education to criticize professional educators when I'm wildly outperforming them as a layman dedicating a few minutes a day to the task. And just using some basic logic, how is a kid supposed to benefit from learning something they mastered when they were two years old? Before you say, oh well, maybe they could use additional practice. No, they mastered it when they were two years old. Literally, none of their day is spent at their level. So, how could a mixed classroom possibly be better for them? Why don't we put kindergarteners with 12th graders and only teach the kindergarten curriculum if mixed ability is so beneficial?
How does the current situation not bring everyone to the bottom when they literally don't teach past the bottom?