Public school teachers don’t want smart kids in their classes. As “education” majors, any kid having above room temp IQ is already well ahead of them.
The ones intelligent enough to comprehend the curriculum generally are the successful kids.
What has really come out of this is the intelligent kids come from a cross-section of society.
It's not the popularity contest some parents make it out to be.
It’s Maryland. Waddaya expect, competent leadership?
I thought “gifted” was code for retarded?
For years I tried to get into special class (with recognition to Bill Cosby). Yup, Yup.
It’s all part of the “No Child Gets Ahead Program”.
Do the Montgomery education leaders also believe that raises and promotions for the adults should be abolished as well, on account of them also being arbitrary and unfair?
Didn't think so.
There are 9 children in my daughter’s TaG class. 9 out of the entire 5th grade.
Maybe they can just call the top 2/5ths normal and other 3/5ths of them below normal and that will even things out?
“Two-fifths of Montgomery students are considered gifted on the basis of aptitude tests, schoolwork, expert opinion and parents’ wishes.”
40%? The label is meaningless, then. Unless by “gifted” they really mean “at least a little brighter than average”. On an IQ basis you’d probably have to lower the qualifications for “bright” to about 105-110 (or maybe even less) to get 40% considered bright.
“Welcome to Lake Webegon, where all the men are good-looking, all the women are strong, and all the children are above average.”
I guarantee that I can instantly identify any student in any school district as “gifted” because the definition is the same anywhere.
The requirements are extremely selective, and the battery of tests exhaustive.
The identity: My child.
Think about it.
One problem I see with labeling a child as “gifted” is the sense of entitlement and specialness that some of these children develop. As a pre-med major, I met many students who had been in “gifted” programs who were shocked when enrolled in highly competitive science courses to find that they were no longer special.
Also,....in the districts in which I have lived “gifted” children are merely given more work or “enriched” work. What these kids need is **acceleration**. Instead, these very bright children do not progress to actual college level work ( and credit) until their high school years, and even that is limited to introductory college courses.
My own homeschoolers were in college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. The two younger earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. Surely there are children by the **THOUSANDS** in the U.S. who are imprisoned in government schools would could be doing the same, if the system would allow them to accelerate.
My own children never at any time felt “gifted” while at the university because they were matching wits with students who would eventually be career mathematicians. They had a very realistic appreciation of the **normal** amount of effort, work, and creativity needed to have success in the field. Unlike the “gifted” students who failed out of the pre-med courses I attended, my children where never shocked to find that were not special.
By the way, my oldest homeschooler is a nationally and internationally ranked athlete. He chose to attend college in the evening to study accounting. In spite of his rigorous training, and travel schedule, and working for a few years in Eastern Europe for our church, he is only a few courses away from finishing his MBA at an age normal for as his contemporaries. As a result of living in Europe he is completely fluent in Russian and enjoys many friendships with Russians attending his school.
We don't care what you teach our kids, just as long as you call them 'gifted'.
Maybe General Shinseki can award them all black berets.