Cincinnati Enquirer
Advocates for gifted education say states need three things in order to serve high-ability students well: a mandate to identify them, a mandate to serve them and the money to carry out those mandates.
Very few states have all three.
Ohio is one of a handful to only have one, a mandate to identify gifted children. Indiana is one of very few to do all three, after mandating identification and service last January and putting state funds into executing those mandates. Kentucky mandates service, but under funds.
Now Ohio is stepping up its gifted education program with new standards that set minimums for minutes-per-week and students-per-classroom in gifted instruction. But some parents and gifted educators fear that, with little state money attached, schools may shrink away from serving gifted students.
It’s part of a long and contentious debate on if, when and how to serve brilliant students. And it’s only gotten more divisive since No Child Left Behind forced school districts to focus harder on low-achieving students or face sanctions.
Gifted advocates say the move to make everyone proficient shortchanges students who can achieve much more academically. They say there’s little incentive for students to push the upper levels of achievement, and that boiling the focus down to reading and math – on which most standardized tests focus – means gifted kids often lose time in subjects they love, like science and the arts.
3 thoughts on “Answer not ‘No Child Left Ahead’”
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Wisconsin now has a mandate to identify — and Wisconsin parents of gifted children know that.
Here is the DPI’s Gifted and Talented homepage —
http://dpi.wi.gov/cal/gifted.html
To see the new Rule, scroll down to “G/T Administrative Rule Now Final.”
Here are all of the Wisconsin State Statutes and Rules regarding gifted students and gifted education —
http://dpi.wi.gov/cal/gift-law.html
Finally, here is the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted —
http://watg.org/
I misspoke earlier today, for if you read the DPI Gifted and Talented homepage, you’ll see that here in Wisconsin we actually have a mandate to identify AND a mandate to serve. What we don’t have is the money to carry out the mandates. As well, for more than 10 years we did not have any sort of enforcement. The result was that Wisconsin school districts could remain out of compliance with the g/t statutes FOR YEARS without consequence. Indeed, the MMSD has been out of compliance since the early 1990’s.
Another comment I’d like to make is that what we’re really talking about is providing genuinely appropriate intellectual challenge and educational opportunity for students who have already mastered the regular curriculum; who learn really, really fast and do not need repetition; who have intellectual passions; etc. I mean really, “gifted, shmifted.” (Yes, you can quote me on that.) Most people I know don’t really care all that much about that word. But the reality is that’s the language we have (especially when it comes to the legal aspect of things) and so we use it.
Finally, as Boston College Professor Ellen Winner (Howard Gardner’s wife) pointed out years ago in an article in The American Psychologist, as the regular classroom curriculum is watered down more and more — and as the expectations in our public schools get lower and lower — more and more students need more than they can get in the regular classroom in order to stay engaged in learning and fulfill their potential as learners.
I like that, “gifted, shmifted”. It’s kind of like “mandate, schmandate.” Show me a completely funded mandate and I’ll show you something other than a mandate. The Feds don’t fund mandates, they just create them and expect that the states will pick up the tab. The states don’t fund mandates, they just create them and expect the local school districts will pick up the tab. Pretty pathetic, but that’s how it works in Amerika.