In Era of Scores, Schools Fight Over Gifted Kids

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ^ | Wednesday, February 4, 2004 | DANIEL GOLDEN

[presidio9]

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Matthew Benton, a self-possessed sixth-grader with an "A" average and an I.Q. of 132, is likely to pass the Ohio Proficiency Tests next month with ease.

But his prowess on the tests, which are used to assess schools' performance, won't help Bennett Elementary, where Matthew is in a citywide program for academically gifted students.

[presidio9]

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[T.Smith]

Those proficiency scores, even with the gifted students included, are just disgusting. Only 15% of students were proficient in math?!? I'm appalled!

[goodnesswins]

The "gifted" sound more like what the NORM should be (and was back in the 50's/60's.

Just yesterday I thought to myself, what better way to continue to get MORE MONEY from ignorant taxpayers, than to make sure the students scores NEVER get much better.....while this article seems to show they are fighting over high scored students, it's a travesty that the other students scores are SOOOO LOW!!!

[proxy_user]

This will soon be like a corporate bureaucracy.

When we have a low-performing guy in our unit, we try to get rid of him by offering him to other departments. Of course we don't tell them he's a dummy, we say he's quite good and you should take him.

Of course, we try to keep all the high-performing guys for ourselves.

Maybe the gifted students should demand a salary, or a bonus, or something.

[Lucretia Borgia]

Thanks for the post. This only goes to prove my frustration level with my son's school dist. He is in 3rd grade and in the gifted program. He receives one hour a week and a week in the fall and spring at an out of school experience.

In second grade, his teacher actually asked that I delay/rescedule his scheduled minor surgury as it was during the Iowa Basic Skills Test. It was felt that this might influence his scores negativley by having to do make up tests. My son said this was silly as it simply meant that other kids could not cheat and copy is answers. BTW, he scored in the top 2%.

[T.Smith]

Are kids normally allowed to copy his answers? Does that go on with tacit approval?

[macrahanish #1]

Our school district, which is a good one, with excellent teachers and great administrators, is teaching kids in sixth grade the same math we learned in fourth grade.
Overall, the curriculum has been "dumbed-down" to allow even the least capable kids to pass(usually).
I don't think this is a local phenomena.

[Ches]

"it's a travesty that the other students scores are SOOOO LOW!!!

Indeed it is. I volunteer at the local elementary working with remedial readers. The majority of these kids are either ESL and/or from single parent homes. A problem this school faces with the testing and receiving funds based on that testing is the large number of ESL students in the population. It's difficult to get them to testing level in English. Keep in mind these kids are coming into the school system at all grade levels, not just kindergarten, without knowing any English, which in turn lowers the overall scores.

I was discussing this with several teachers (liberals of the Hillary loving variety) there and they said they would like to see the control of education returned to the state and local levels.

Our fifth grader was supposed to be in the gifted program this year. Seems that funding that program was not a priority this year.

[Lucretia Borgia]

It sure seems like, the desks are touching each other. The students are allowed to erect barriers by setting up folders.

It seems like the cheaters are not punished. In first grade, there was a student who kept taking my son's work and putting his name on it. Teacher would not belive complaint until I confronted her with physical evidence. At this point my son and several other kids started using pen or marker to put their name on their papers.

[Paul C. Jesup]

And the dumbing down continues.

If anyone think the U.S. has any future with the way things are going, they are only fooling themselves.

[Lizavetta]

Our school district, which is a good one, with excellent teachers and great administrators, is teaching kids in sixth grade the same math we learned in fourth grade. Overall, the curriculum has been "dumbed-down" to allow even the least capable kids to pass(usually).

So the school district has dumbed down the curriculum but it's still a good school district? I don't get it. Perhaps this is part of the old saw where everyone admits that the schools are rotten but it's never their school that's one of the bad ones.

But you're right about it not being a local phenomena. Before we pulled our kids out of school I had a look at the SAT-9 test and it was ridiculously easy.

[macrahanish #1]

I went to a large suburban Pittsburgh district. I was in sixth grade in 1971. I currently live in rural northern Pennsylvania, where my children attend school. I think the lower expectations are common nationally.

[macrahanish #1]

I agree. I'm also frightened by the fact that most of the kids are oblivious of where they stand against kids of other developed countries. The old school manufacturing jobs are leaving in droves. American kids are ill-equipped to competein the world economy. Perhaps their grand kids will be illegally immigrating to Mexico for manufacturing jobs.

[goodnesswins]

QUESTION: What would you all think if we went back to the ONE ROOM Schoolhouse type of education.....where it was small - say 25 kids, but all different levels, and taught by 2 teachers?

[brbethke]

The importance of the scores of gifted children to the survival of schools and the jobs of principals and teachers can lead to statistical finagling that distorts school performance...

No, really? I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find that public sector employees might be trying to finagle their job metrics.

"It sounds as if the folks who want to keep the gifted kids" in the neighborhood schools "are putting the system ahead of the kids," he said...

Imagine that. Putting the needs of the bureaucracy ahead of the needs of the students. That sort of thing has never happened before. It must be Bush's fault.

With the advent of high-stakes testing, that enthusiasm was replaced by what former gifted-programs supervisor Maria Cougras Pappas calls "subtle sabotage." One principal, Kathleen Good of Youngstown's Mary Haddow Elementary, decided not to refer any gifted children, contending her school met their needs with its own gifted program. When the district asked six children from Mary Haddow to attend the city's gifted programs in 2000, Mrs. Good protested so strongly that the invitations were withdrawn.

"It wasn't fair to pull out your top group and place them somewhere else," Mrs. Good says. "You're creating artificially high scores in some buildings..."

Once again, we hear the battle cry of the offended liberal (and the cranky 3-year-old): "It's not fair!"

Quick, call the Handicapper General!

In 2002, when Youngstown's Harding Elementary lost 10 students to gifted programs at other schools, Principal Beverly Schumann thought it was "very, very unfair. I felt like, we have an excellent staff here, this staff is what got those students to be identified as gifted...

Ah yes, identifying them was the key. Their gifts and abilities were in no way influenced by the students' innate intelligence, desire to achieve, or family life.

Lordy, the colossal, dim-witted arrogance of some of the education professionals quoted in this article just puts me right off my lunch.

[azcap]

Last year, 79.5% of the district's gifted sixth-graders attained proficient or above in math and 72.7% did so in reading.

 

I believe this sentence really says that 20% of "Gifted" kids failed to pass the profiency test in Math and 27% failed in reading. Government schools produce government quality. There is no fix for bureaucracy.

[GladesGuru]

Better brace yourself, brbethke - for the worst is yet to be "outed".

The selfish, socialist driven agenda of the educ-crats is just now coming to the public awareness. As one who developed programs for both the gifted and for teachers, I assure you that the educrat will hang on to its paycheck and perks regardless of damage to the students entrusted to them.

Public school administrators - to know them is to loath them.

[af_vet_rr]

Once again, "No Child Left Behind" rears its ugly head - gotta love the feds dictating to the local government. I've read that more and more districts are looking at getting out of it/ignoring it because it's costing them more than they can gain.

[O Brother Sean]

I have an 11 year old, who is in high school algebra in Texas, and has an "A" average, but the state of Texas will not give him high school credit. The sad thing is that this is the best school we could find. All the schools with so called "gifted" programs were nothing more than liberal paper projects. Thanks for the great read