Boosting Minorities In Gifted Programs Poses Dilemmas

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ^ | April 7, 2004 | DANIEL GOLDEN

[SJackson]

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Under South Carolina's old rules, TiShanna Smith wouldn't be considered gifted. Under its new rules, she is.

Every Tuesday, the fifth-grader at Greenview Elementary attends a three-hour advanced class in which she studies algebra and researches topics such as the history of hot-air balloons. "The 'challenge' class helps me get ahead," says 11-year-old TiShanna, an African-American from a single-parent family, who was identified as gifted by a special test intended to boost minorities. "When my older brother comes home, I help him with his homework."

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Shades of Lake Woebegone, "where all the children are above average."

[rdb3]

Uh oh.

Show 'em my motto!

[Support Free Republic]

---

Don't cry .. The Freepers will save us from John Kerry
	Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- It is in the breaking news sidebar!

[muawiyah]

For any society to get an advantage out of a Gifted & Talented (GT) program it has to focus on the top 1/4 of 1%, else it's just wasting it's money. There simply aren't enough teachers around with the capability to deal effectively with 5%, or 20 times as many as should be targeted.

[dakine]

Exactly what I was thinking....

[normy]

I have two buddies who teach at two different middle schools in the same district. At the science teachers school they sent a memo out asking the teachers to nominate a student for an NAACP acheivement award. The stipulations required that the student be of a certain age, NOT be on the honor roll, and must be black.

My freind had mentioned there are alot of Hispanics and whites in his school but they have an unusually large amount of awards for black students.

The science teacher e-mailed the letter to the special-ed teacher who responded with an e-mail that said," Whats next? The Klan gonna give some white kid an award for underacheiving?" (paraphrased).

.Well the one who wrote the e-mail was called to the superintendent and forced to write an apology and was put on some sort of probation. This was a private e-mail to one other person useing the schools computer. I found that to be insane.

[doodad]

They did that crap here in GA as well to dilute the gifted classes because so few blacks met the requirements. So they added artistic talent and community involvement as TAG merits. Over our objections and sure enough most of them have now flunked out.

[Condor51]

Is it true that the 'Alternative Tests' include questions like this:

MATH
1) Majik is a Junkie-Ho with a $200 a day habit who charges $20 a 'trick'.
Solve dis problem bro; How many 'tricks' does Majik have to do in a day just to feed her jones?

2) Tyrone and Juan stick up a bank and take $20,000. Tyrone leaves the scene in a tricked-up blue Chevy and Juan leaves in a red Ford low-rider.
Solve did problem homey; Who had the Glock? Tyrone or Juan?

Wait... is that culturally 'insensitive'??

[FITZ]

Here they made sure that the gifted teachers were all hispanic and spoke Spanish --- that still didn't get many more gifted hispanic students into their programs --- so they're doing an interesting thing --- they're putting all the kids into the gifted program --- the teachers for the gifted will get all the kids to do some kind of enrichment. I'm not sure I even disagree with that since the selection of gifted seems pretty arbitrary many times.

[DameAutour]

Can the educrats be any more stupid? This is ridiculous. It only hurts these children to be labeled "gifted" when they can't handle the extra load. Being "gifted" is not a priviledge, it entails extra responsibility.

[The Great RJ]

Our education system is beyond hope. Vast amounts of money are spent, by federal dictum, to mainstream students in regular classes who are physically and/or mentally unable to to do even basic school work. I personally know of a student who is at best described as being in a persistent vegetative state--wholly not aware of her surroundings, who is in a regular 7th grade class with an aide doing her school work. I have also been a substitute teacher in a junior high foreign language class with "special needs" students who cannot read with aides again doing their work.

It is no wonder that the PC forces have now applied this same twisted logic to talented and gifted programs.

[headsonpikes]

Harrison Bergeron bttt!

The mission of the public schools is to identify intelligence...

...and destroy it.

[cherry]

I think that the "gifted" white students who have to take the more traditional aptitude test should also then get to take the non-traditional test as well, and then compare their scores to the minority and low-income students ...

I would bet that the white students do better on BOTH tests....hmmmmmmm

beyond that, I am not into elitist education, and I would bet that most of the nation's doctors, engineers, physicists,lawyers, pilots etc come from the ranks of non-gifted students in regular classes...

in fact, I believe that some extremely capable people were actually very poor students thru HS.....

The whole thing with black students or other minority students is this:.......raise standards and expectations and they will all do well.....

make children excited about learning and they learn, period....

[codyjacksmom]

"The whole thing with black students or other minority students is this:.......raise standards and expectations and they will all do well.....

make children excited about learning and they learn, period...."

I agree. Lowering requirements just to meet a "quota", regardless of race, is just going to cause frustration in the children. Frustration for the true gifted students because they have to slow down to let the slower kids keep up....and frustration for the truly non-gifted students, because they can't keep up. I wonder what the drop out rate will be for these "quota" kids.