COG Members:

This was posted in yesterday’s St. Petersburg Time’s blog, The Gradebook. Rep. Legg is from Pasco County.

Gifted education in sights
October 23, 2007

Last time Florida lawmakers tried to change funding for gifted education, the advocates came out of the woodwork to beat the proposed bill into submission. This time around, the folks who want to alter the system are reaching out to the parent groups early.

Rep. John Legg (left), vice chairman of the House K-12 Education Committee, is working with Senate Education Appropriations chairman Steve Wise to craft a bill that would hold school districts to a higher standard when it comes to gifted programs. Their proposal, still in drafting, would force districts to keep track of how they are spending money for gifted education. Right now, it’s just a chunk of special education funding, and most districts can’t (won’t?) say how the cash gets divided, or which academic programs get the money.

Too often, Legg said, parents will say their children are classified as "gifted," but the district gives them maybe an hour a week of pull-out attention, yet the districts get full funding for gifted education.

"I’m saying, they better get the programs you’re saying they get, because we’re paying for them," Legg told the Gradebook.

The bill also would require screening of all students to determine whether they are gifted, rather than wait for a parent or teacher to ask for the testing.

Already, parent groups have seen a version and made recommendations about training for teachers of gifted kids, sending the bill writers back to their computers. Legg said he hopes to file a working draft in November, and then hold lots of public hearings, to ensure what ultimately emerges is something most people who care can live with. But one thing is clear, he said: "The national trend is that we’ve dropped the ball when it comes to our gifted kids."

And the time, it seems, has come to change that. By Jeff Solochek, St. Petersburg Times.

Gifted kids get attention - Most members of the School Board support having a separate school or center for their education.
October 3, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - They might be gifted, but they haven’t been getting a fair shake. That was the consensus of the Hernando County School Board, which agreed Tuesday to form a task force to consider the needs of high-IQ students. Every member but one expressed support for the idea of developing a new school, or perhaps a center within an existing school, for gifted students. "Some of our gifted kids, they’re coming to dislike school; they feel stifled," said board member John Sweeney. "We’ve got kids going bonkers because they’re bored to death," member Sandra Nicholson said in agreement... By TOM MARSHALL, St. Petersburg Times.

The Gifted Children Left Behind
August 27, 2007

With reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act high on the agenda as Congress returns from its recess, lawmakers must confront the fact that the law is causing many concerned parents to abandon public schools that are not failing.

These parents are fleeing public schools not only because, as documented by a recent University of Chicago study, the act pushes teachers to ignore high-ability students through its exclusive focus on bringing students to minimum proficiency. Worse than this benign neglect, No Child forces a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning, as school becomes an endless chain of basic lessons aimed at low-performing students. By Susan Goodkin and David G. Gold, Washington Post.

Are we failing our geniuses?
August 16, 2007

In a no-child-left-behind conception of public education, lifting everyone up to a minimum level is more important than allowing students to excel to their limit. It has become more important for schools to identify deficiencies than to cultivate gifts. …What’s needed is a new model for gifted education, an urgent sense that prodigious intellectual talents are a threatened resource. By John Cloud, Time Magazine.

Fall 2007 issue:
Gifted Education Press Quarterly (in .pdf format)

Who Are the Gifted Students and How Should Schools Handle Them?