I have had school administrators tell me that they opposed having a gifted/magnet school because (1) it would take away from the regular kids' experience, if the local school lost the gifted kids, and (2) it didn't seem fair that the local school would lose the high test scores. I considered suggesting to kids that they subvert the performance exams in the way that you suggest, but never did so. Bill C. -----Original Message----- From: math-fun-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:math-fun-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Eugene Salamin Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2011 3:20 PM To: math-fun Subject: Re: [math-fun] NYTimes: How to Fix Our Math Education Here's a news article [ http://news.yahoo.com/ind-vouchers-prompt-thousands-change-schools-170216446... ] with headline "Indiana vouchers prompt thousands to change schools". It looks like, given the freedom to choose and take their money with them, people will desert the public schools. Not all families have this freedom. Sometimes, it is reserved for economically or scholastically poor students. Here's an idea. A gifted student will normally strive for 100% on these performance exams that have become so important in recent times. Public schools like smart students since the high grades help their rating score and bring increased funding. But suppose instead these students conspire to achieve 0%. Say there are fifty 5-choice questions, 0.8^50 = 1.4e-5, so there's a subtle message in that zero score. -- Gene _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun