Posted on 01/21/2023 6:46:17 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A battle is brewing in the Baltimore County School District in Maryland this month and it should serve as yet another reason to keep an eye on what your local school boards are up to. They are currently working on the district’s budget for fiscal year 2024 and parents have noticed some significant cuts to the gifted and talented students program. The proposed budget would not end the program entirely, but it would eliminate three of the four teaching positions currently assigned to the program. Parents have pointed out that students who qualify for the program enhance their chances of being accepted to prominent universities and one teacher is simply not enough to handle all of the qualifying students. Others are asking why this particular program is in the crosshairs for having its budget slashed. (Baltimore Sun)
At a public hearing for Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Darryl L. Williams’ proposed budget, two of the seven speakers who came forth for comment voiced worry about the possible cuts in staffing for gifted and talented students.
Williams’ proposed fiscal year 2024 budget details cutting three full-time resource teachers from the Office of Advanced Academics, which serves gifted and talented students. Such cuts would mean only one resource teacher, one coordinator and one administrative assistant.
The school system’s budget for FY2023 allotted funds for four resource teachers, one coordinator and one administrative assistant, Baltimore County Schools spokesperson Gboyinde Onijala said.
So what’s really going on here? The Public Schools Superintendent who proposed the budget is saying that the change would produce “savings” for the school system. That may be true, but his report also cites a 2020 study saying that Black and Hispanic students are “underrepresented” in the program.
It’s not as if the Baltimore County Public Schools have seen their budget decrease significantly. Unlike many other urban school districts, Baltimore County only saw a net decrease of 49 students from 2021 to 2022. So their tax revenue should be nearly flat, not requiring such a significant cut to the successful program.
This truly looks like yet another example of the war on merit. What passes for “equity” in many of our cities today is a thinly veiled desire for a system that strives for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. If some students, particularly those coming from politically favored demographic groups, aren’t doing as well as others, you might expect the schools to work harder to bring everyone up to peak performance. But instead, they seem to be leaning toward dragging the top performers down to an “equal” level of mediocrity.
Fortunately, some of the parents caught wind of this before the budget was finalized and are pushing back. Perhaps they will be able to force the district to at least keep the gifted and talented students program at its current levels, even if they can’t afford to expand it. But if not, some of these parents may need to do what we’ve seen happening in other school districts around the country. Concerned parents and their like-minded neighbors have been running for positions on their local school boards and pushing out “progressive” members who prioritize woke policies over quality education.
When they finish straightening out the budget, perhaps those parents should take a look at the current curriculum and the books being given to the children. You never know what might have snuck into the system these days.
Principal Diana Moon-Glampers concurs.
Good. Cut more spending.
Public schools should provide a basic education and nothing more.
More parents should send their children to private school or find other ways to educate them.
Those who are truly talented wind up doing well regardless of what school they go to. That’s why I don’t waste much time caring around the demise of national merit scholars and certain ethnicities (including us whiteys) not getting into Ivy League schools due to don’t call them quotas.
Equality of opportunity does not result in equality of outcome. The perpetually offended professional negroes call that “racist”, and demand “Diversity” and “equity”. “Diversity” means “kill whitey” and “equity” means “steal all of whitey’s stuff”.
Mr. “Tired of Taxes” should welcome my proposal: Abolish government schools, and the property taxes that exist to fund them.
I wholeheartedly agree with your proposal! (But, I’m not a Mr.)
“But instead, they seem to be leaning toward dragging the top performers down to an “equal” level of mediocrity.”
Yep, socialism is a race to the bottom.
Our local public university runs a gifted-math program, for kids from 7 grade and up. The fees to students are minimal, as the university provides professors, classrooms, etc... By the time the kids graduate high-school, the participants will have completed university-level calculus. It costs the local public schools nothing - they only need to mention to their 12 year olds that an entrance exam will be held.
Our local public school district stopped even telling the 7th graders about the exam. I asked an insider-friend why, and was told the union leader, who is also head of “academic counseling” found it too much trouble to manage those few advanced kids outside scores, and felt overall it wasn’t “fair” a few got to take advanced math.
Ours is an uppper middle-class suburb (and not that it should matter), but nearly all white.
I raised the issue with the school, at meetings and on a PTO blog. Almost no one cared our district had now ended access to this advanced math program. The karen-mothers only cared about “pressure on the children,” and the fewer fathers involved, if they cared, only worried about sports.
The ONLY people who raised a voice were the few Chinese, Korean and Indian parents in our district.
Shameful.
“No Student Gets Ahead” program...
“If I had a gifted and talented child I wouldn’t let them anywhere near a government school, anyway.”
I wouldn’t and I didn’t for my kids. But sadly most will, even here, as the ‘free daycare’ is just too much to resist for them.
My advice is to stop calling these programs for the “Gifted”. Just call them advanced. As in advanced calculus. Gifted is a snotty assz way of prompting them. I never liked this word.
You mean that you don’t “self identify” as a male.
We are all gifted by God, just in different ways.
They could always transfer some money from the “gifted athletes” program and swap some coaches for real teachers.
I identify as exactly what I am, biologically. :-)
If the tax revenue is flat where will they get money for raises.
That is a good idea.
All sports teams should be in private leagues or private schools.
Even back then, the accompanying literature explained that eligibility was based upon raw I.Q. test scores (one had to be in the top percentile) - but that "extra consideration" would be given to students whose "underprivileged" socio-economic situation "presumably" resulted in their having lower scores.
(It was actually phrased in a much more round-about and opaque fashion - but even at the time, I found it remarkable that they should even only halfway admit to trying to compensate for racial disparities.)
So, rather than banning the program, the leftists of the 1970s simply found a "work-around."
However, I should mention that the Latino kids who were inducted into the program (in the name of "equity" - though that term had not yet achieved currency back then) soon dropped out or failed to ever display any enthusiasm. And whatever projects they conducted in the framework / with the support of the program were not very impressive (while my White colleagues and I were busy taking soil samples and subjecting them to spectroscopic examination).
Regards,
Public school itself is a socialist idea. It’s like welfare, food stamps, housing assistance, and other forms of government assistance.
The difference is that public school is funded by property taxes. When homeowners don’t pay, they lose their homes.
So, most parents put their kids in public schools, and they fight over which schools their kids get into.
Some parents feel entitled to “gifted” schools for their kids; they expect their neighbors to pay for these schools; and they fight to keep their neighbors’ kids out of them.
They are the real socialists.
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