Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 10/08/2026 7:50:11 AM PDT by fwdude
Schools are ending gifted and talented programs. They will no longer separate kids by ability.
Why?
To address “inequity.”
“This is so misguided,” education researcher Michael Petrilli said in my new video. “These equity people say, ‘Oh, we’re against gifted education.’ At the same time, they’re upset that universities aren’t very diverse. Guess what? The [equity advocates] are a big part of the problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
From the article:
“I tried to interview anti-tracking activists to ask why they think racial equity is so much more important than letting smart kids excel. Not one that we contacted would agree to an interview.”
Not surprising.
The goal is to produce kids that are uneducated political activists, starting with kindergarten. these kids will lead the future Islamic communist revolution in the US and then spread world wide.
The goal is to produce kids that are uneducated political activists, starting with kindergarten. these kids will lead the future Islamic communist revolution in the US and then spread world wide.
Education of children is the responsibility of parents. When presenting an account to God ‘the public school system let me down’ is not going to cut it.
Retired urban public high school teacher here. We used to have a great honors program. It’s gone now, for the reasons stated it the article.
Here’s the way it used to work. To get into an honors class, you needed a B or better in a prerequisite class. Very straightforward.
For example, to get into Honors Chemistry, you needed at least a B in Algebra 1 (Honors Algebra 1 or regular Algebra 1).
This method was completely color-blind. No matter. The honors classes were not perfectly balanced by race. So they had to go.
I was in a gifted program and had friends that were not. Getting rid of these programs will do incredible damage. Children are all different and learn at different rates. They have different levels of support outside of school. Placing a child in a program above their level makes them fall behind. Placing them in a level below their level will make them rebel. My cousin is a perfect example of that. She is extremely intelligent. She went to a very small school that did not support her. She left years before graduating on her own. She now is very successful, but had to do it the hard way.
Why I gotta reed bizh?
It hurt my brain.
Yu fuppin Raysis.
I ran into this when I was teaching in Los Angeles. We were an inner-city middle school, and we had this young teacher (nice fellow, I really liked him, but boy was he stupid in some regards) who was against tracking for “equity.” I tried to explain in a school meeting in front of everyone that all he was going to do was ensure that our best students would never have the chance to compete against the white kids of the upscale schools. I said, “This is literally like drowning all the third class passengers on the Titanic because you can’t fit them all in the boats, and you want equity. It’s only equity amongst the third class. The first and second class passengers aren’t at this school!”
He stared at me like a deer in the headlights, as if his brain was struggling to include completely new information. Happily, I prevailed, but who knows what it’s like now. I couldn’t believe it though. Seriously, he wanted our best little Hispanic kids held back for the comfort of our worst. As if they didn’t already have so much going against them.
This mess started back in the 80's when they ended "tracking" which placed higher learners together and slow learners together - it was the proper way to help kids learn at their own speed - but they ended it because they felt it was mean.
This started many decades ago, the canceling of gifted classes, maybe the 1970s, but for sure in the 1980s.
People would be shocked at how far back this stuff goes, like changing the names of schools from things like Washington elementary to Martin Luther King elementary which started before the mentions of it in this century.
Former (non-liberal) girlfriend is a high school teacher.
A few years ago her school adopted this policy. Just dump them all into generic classes.
Results were predictable. Dragged everyone down to below passing standards.
Predictable solution was implemented. Lowered graduation standards.
True - it marked the beginning of the end of K-12 school quality.
And that is socialism.
I’m glad you remember, these waves of such stories appear and people think they are new without realizing that these things have been going on for 50 and 60 years and it is just that the stories resurface with new examples and a new generation of writers and readers thinking it just started.
On the flip side, a lot of schools say that having separate remediation programs for subpar students who are falling behind unfairly stigmatizes low-performing (and often “minority”) students. Their solution to the problem is to turn the entire curriculum, i.e. for all students, into one remediation program geared towards the aptitude and effort of the absolute worst.
My wife and I raised two G T kids.
Both are mensa kids. Both kids were reading on a 8th grade level when they were in kindergarten.
They were able to get into a G T summer camp where they could be with others that were like them.
My son is now an instructor at this same camp every summer.
Stossel mentioned it started around 1985, sounds about right. It coincided with woke teachers and the emergence of political teacher unions that forgot what teachers were supposed to do, not just fund leftist candidates and policies.
I have mentioned this previously, but the job websites (LinkedIn, Indeed and maybe others) used to offer skills tests that you could take for assessment of specific skills, like Excel spreadsheets or accounting. These scores, which ranged from “expert” to “novice” could be published in your profile for recruiting companies to see. It was a great way to showcase your abilities for recruiting companies.
About the time of COVID, these scores were revamped to a flatter “Pass/completed” non-descript level. My “expert” Excel score was demoted to the same score that a novice would achieve. A year or so later, they did away with the testing and the scores altogether. It didn’t take a genius to understand why in the environment of the BLM-fueled DEI craze. Black job seekers just were not doing as well as others on these tests, and it ‘just wasn’t fair.’
There is no cure for inequality
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.