 Should high school gifted programs be banned?
tokenadult: Another crazy question. The short answer is, no, I wouldn't want any kind of specialized program DESIRED BY LEARNERS AND THEIR PARENTS to be banned, unless there was irrefutable evidence that the program was actively harmful. (And if we are going to ban something for being harmful, let's start by banning the way that mathematics is taught in elementary school in most schools in the United States.)http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdfhttp://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/ame...http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Skywalkertalk.pdfI know of some worthwhile secondary school gifted programs, such as the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technologyhttp://www.tjhsst.edu/or the Montgomery Blair High School Science, Mathematics, Computer Science Magnethttp://www.mbhs.edu/departments/magnet/or the Davidson Academy of Nevadahttp://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/and those school programs serve the needs of some learners who don't find their needs well met by conventional school programs. Some of the alumni of the better secondary schools for gifted students end up being start-up founders, and that is great.I didn't go through any such program. I wish I would have. No such program exists in my state, so I have sought a distance learning programhttp://epgy.stanford.edu/ohs/index.htmlfor my oldest son, which has its own set of trade-offs. Like I did, I think he will enjoy being off to college and nearer to more intellectual peers more of the time.