Don’t Overlook Gifted Students
September 13, 2008

A recent national study by a leading education think tank has confirmed what many of us have long recognized - our education system as a whole is neglecting the needs of our highest-achieving performers, and the majority of our teachers are neither adequately trained nor encouraged to help these students maximize their potential…

…Our nation faces a clear choice: We can continue deluding ourselves with the belief that gifted students exist only in certain populations and can thrive educationally without prudent attention to their learning needs. Or we can begin working toward a solution that finally leaves no child behind. By DEL SIEGLE, President of the National Association for Gifted Children, Tampa Tribune.

Kenric Ward: The ghetto of gifted education
July 8, 2008

…Building on that foundation, Congress has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on education and, in 2001, enacted accountability in the form of No Child Left Behind. NCLB was touted as a great bipartisan reform, with President Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., linking arms. It promised to measure academic outputs, rather than simply pour in more inputs (though there are plenty of those, too). Unfortunately, NCLB has become mired in politics. Critics from the right and left savage the program as too weak or overly restrictive.

A new study by the Brookings Institution and analysis by the Thomas Fordham Institute point to what may be NCLB’s weakest Achilles Heel - gifted students.

According to these reports:

• While the nation’s lowest achieving students made respectable gains from 2000 to 2007, performance of top students was "languid."

• Teachers say advanced pupils are a lower priority in their schools. Sixty percent of surveyed instructors say low-achieving students are a "top priority" at their schools; only 23 percent say that about high achievers.

• Low-achieving children receive dramatically more attention from teachers. Eighty-one percent of instructors say "academically struggling" students are likely to get their one-on-one attention vs. 5 percent who say that about "advanced students."

…Parents, take note and demand "equal" rights for your children.

Excellence versus Equity: Political Forces in the Education of Gifted Students
Duke Gifted Letter, Volume 8 / Issue 4 / Summer 2008

This should be must read for anyone involved with education.

Here are a few highlights:

Do gifted students warrant special attention in the public schools in the United States? Rhetoric and heated political discourse surround the question of identification and education of gifted students with the philosophical positions of egalitarianism and elitism at odds. Critics of appropriately differentiated academic experiences for highly able children contend that these services are somehow unfair to other children.

"The ’love-hate’ relationship society has had with gifted education has led to both an energetic focus on gifted students and a near total ignoring of their needs."

For example, despite seventy years of research on the benefits of acceleration a consistent policy on acceleration does not exist at state levels or across the states. Although programs for the gifted have served as laboratories of innovation for years, accountability measures and reform efforts in the wider education arena have focused singly on meeting basic proficiency standards. The passage of No Child Left Behind underscores the federal emphasis on bringing students "up" to proficiency and completely ignores those students scoring at and above proficient levels.

The irony is that schools receive accolades for their best and brightest such as National Merit Finalists or boast proudly when students win at state or national levels in academic competitions, yet efforts to group gifted students with like-ability peers are hindered. Schools strive toward improved test scores and high quality teachers, but there is resistance to funding teachers to go back and receive licensure or special training in gifted. Parents of gifted students are often perplexed because they want their children to receive appropriate programming but are often reluctant to challenge a school’s practices for fear of sounding elitist or being ostracized.

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?