Locally my school system had what they called accelerated courses which were called AP at the senior level where you took an AP exam to get college credit. There were also L classes that were the opposite. So based on your grades and test scoring you had the choice of 3 classes but one was the simple class, one was the typical, and one was advanced. In some cases like math it would go further as you could have an senior in the freshman L class lets say. Our state had a special math and science academy that did not do grade level 9 and to get into it you had to be recommended by a teacher and apply. It was a boarding school downstate. I know it because I was recommended but did not get in. I may have never finished the application. They did not give you all that much time.

half of My polycule says that magnet schools are all fake

US magnet schools are real, although controlled by the local school district rather than the federal govt. They tend to be organized around subject (STEM, performing arts, etc) rather than cognitive gift per se . One might argue that a pre-law/pre-med magnet could have substantial overlap with cognitive ability.

Services for the cognitively "gifted", to the degree they exist, tend to be located within a given school. They have a special curriculum, the flipside of one might have for kids who are cognitively challenged.

and only serve the rich. There’s no way a low income white boy

I assure you that isn't true, both from direct experience and from working in magnets. Rich folks can likely influence any situation but magnet != private school for rich kids.

it doesn’t have any dumb jock types

They typically don't have competitive sports teams so any jock-ness is individual rather than collective. Kids geographically local to a magnet can often attend automatically so there is a subset of Normals at a magnet, including jocks.

Damn, this just led me down a rabbit hole that made me discover that 48% of Australian high school kids go to private schools ... What's going on over there? It's like 5-9% in the US and Canada.

Yes. I went to a magnet school.

This school had both normal classes and magnet classes.

I was very intimidated by the magnet classes, so I never applied until my last year. When I did get into the smart classes, I realized they weren't necessarily more difficult. The biggest difference was that the kids who didn't want to be there and constantly distracted the class were absent, so we were able to get more done every day.

Also, the teachers are generally better (less likely to get a Football coach who teaches on the side). But the curriculum is the same.

I was pissed that I wasn't in those classes sooner.

As a low income white boy from Queens myself, I can say with confidence yes they totally exist. I can't speak for the rest of the country but in NYC there are a bunch of public/free magnet schools, that you get into on merit alone. Many years ago I tried to get into Bronx science high school but my grades weren't good enough, so I ended up having to go to a standard NYC public high school.

A magnet school is just a school that will take students from anywhere in the district instead of only students that live nearby. Some require tests to attend, but others do not.

But yes, there are public schools for gifted students that admit purely based on academic merit and exam scores. In theory, a rich student would not be able to buy their way in. In practice, having a tutor who can coach a child on exam specifics is a very large advantage.

Depends on the state. The US is a very big place, and some states give pretty much no shits about education.

The Boston area definitely has some exam schools. Boston Latin is the oldest.

I went to a magnet school in FL. Magnet schools exists but I don't believe it has much to do with being gifted or money.

When I went, as long as you had 2 / 3 gpa ( B / C avg) you got to sign up and stay in the program (2 gpa per year to stay). Didn't have to do anything else to sign up or stay in the program, as long as you had a pretty mid grade average and there were spots to be in it, bar was set low but could have just been a FL thing.

Looking back at how many people I was in those classes with, I only recall about 5 people actually go into the specific field the magnet was for personally.

There are occasionally private schools that cater specifically to gifted children but they area somewhat rare.

Many public schools have gifted programs to identify and foster the education of gifted students but they are generally being cut in most places and outright banned in some areas.

The overall trend in the US is to pass students who can't read, write or do basic math. There is no real push to care about high achievers.

Yes the US does.

There are public schools that kids have to apply for and there are a number of private schools that kids have to apply for.

Magnet schools are not fake nor are they only for the rich. A buddy of mine who is an electrician, his daughter applied and is starter her freshmen year at one this year.

One thing you need to understand it that under the American Federal system, each state is responsible for its schools and each local county runs its own Board of Education. So, you can have two high schools a few miles apart where one spends $5 million on a football stadium and the other spends $5 million on a science lab.

New York City has Bronx Science and Stuyversant High Schools that require special tests to get accepted. There's also Music and Art, Art and Design, and other elite schools.

One of my kids went to a magnet school for performing arts. They're public schools, and they don't cost extra, but you do have to apply for them if you don't live in the immediate area and there's an element of competition to get in.

The idea behind magnet schools is that you can improve the overall academic performance of a school if you increase the diversity of the economic and academic backgrounds of the students. Schools in the US are tied to a geographic area, which in turn is generally correlated with income - poor areas tend to have bad schools with low funding; richer areas have much better schools with better funding. With magnet schools the state/school district/whatever will take a struggling school, pump a bunch of extra funding into it, and give it some sort of academic theme (e.g. visual arts, performing arts, STEM, etc.) with the goal of attracting gifted students from outside to come to the school.

The USA doesn't have a system of magnet schools. Some parts of the country, including New York City, do.

New York City's school district has several high schools that you have to a test to get into that high school or have an artistic portfolio. These tests are very competitive and the high schools are geared to help funnel the brightest of New York City's youth into college. There is no tuition to get in and these high schools are seen as a gateway to the best colleges in the world.

Most school districts in the USA don't have these public magnet schools.

I think it depends. Education is handled at a local level for the most part. That’s why school quality varies so much based on the income level of the area. I know NYC has such a system, but I don’t think my school district in the suburbs did. My parents did take me to go look at some special school when I was young, but it was nowhere close to us and I assume private. I didn’t like the place so I didn’t end up going and stayed in our local public schools.

A lot of larger cities like New York and Chicago have magnet schools. They usually take a mix of merit students and endowment students, making it easy for rich people to buy their kids into them. Smaller cities and most towns have gifted and talented programs connected to public schools instead of their own schools. Your polycule is correct that they're usually just resume builders for rich kids, but it is totally possible for a poor white kid from Queens to get accepted through the merit track.

Not so much "gifted" schools but "prestige" schools like Harvard or Yale where money speaks loudly.

ah, a master baiter in our midst!

Stuff in NYC is frequently an outlier and only exists that way there and it doesn't really mean anything. Most places it's a different class not an entire school.

I was a gifted kid schooled in NSW. My kid was schooled in QLD. I've never heard of these gifted schools.