Rethinking What Gifted Education Means, and Whom It Should Serve

[elleng]

SILVER SPRING, Md. — It was a searing summer day before the start of the school year, but Julianni and Giselle Wyche, 10-year-old twins, were in a classroom, engineering mini rockets, writing in journals and learning words like “fluctuate” and “cognizant.”

The sisters were among 1,000 children chosen for an enrichment course intended in part to prepare them for accelerated and gifted programs in Montgomery County, Md. All of the students were from schools that serve large numbers of low-income families.

“It’s one of my favorite parts of summer,” Julianni said.

The program is one element in a suite of sweeping changes meant to address a decades-old problem in these Washington suburbs, and one that is troubling educators across the nation: the underrepresentation of black, Hispanic and low-income children in selective academic settings.'>>>

https://www.democraticunderground.com/112412648

[demigoddess]

1. NOt only that but gifted programs are not good. I have 2 sons, both were in

gifted programs in different states even. And both of them asked to get out of the programs. They do not teach them in a way that gifted children like to learn. Both of them learned more and better in classes with just plain good teachers, outside of the gifted programs. Maybe they should just pay attention to getting good teachers and letting them do their thing.

[mopinko]

2. sorting aspies from other gifted kids.

my son is now 32, but when he was 5, all i knew was that he was super smart, super shy, and had a sense of fairness that was gonna clash hard against the bureaucracy.
we ended up homeschooling, something he blames for his ongoing social ills. but at the time aspie was not even a thing.
even 10 years later, when his sister's teacher was working on her master teacher in gifted certification, we talk about the fact that there were a lot of other kids like him. but there was still not a recognition that these kids were on the spectrum.
he has never been tested, but from everything i know, i would bet money he is on the spectrum.

i hope they are doing a better job of that now, but i doubt it.
they need a whole different system than kids who are smart but normal.
bottom line, tho, is that we need to recognize that smart kids need different learning environments, just like kids on the other end of the bell curve. and should be entitled to it.
but yeah, that there is a snake pit of an argument.

[elleng]

3. SUCH difficult issues, for public education.

[cyclonefence]

4. I hate gifted programs

and my son was in one throughout grade school. Gifted programs validate unnecessarily the "smart kids" in the class and give their parents something to be snotty about. And they don't do a damn bit of good.

Children chosen for gifted programs in our public schools were given the kind of enrichment activities that many gifted children receive from their parents. They are not the children who need to be exposed to opera, art museums, robot construction, or field trips. Kids in our school district were placed in the gifted program if they had IQs over (I think) 120. These are kids who do not need programs to keep them from being bored in school. First of all *all* kids are bored in school. Secondly think how much worse boredom is if you don't really understand what's going on.

I hate gifted programs.

[BigmanPigman]

5. I was a 6th grade GATE/Cluster teacher for two years.

Gifted and Talented is GATE. Cluster means that about 20% of the class is made up of students who were average academically. I wasn't given a choice, it was the only job offer in after two years of subbing and zero openings. I was trained and was a good teacher (that is what I was told by the admin, staff, students and parents). My students were tested as GATE ( the top 95%) as well as those who weren't officially 95% but had received very high grades in 5th and 4th grades. I was trained to teach Special Students. Special means students who are academically very high as well as very low, both extremes. It also covers students with special needs such as Asperger Syndrome who were also gifted. After this grade I went all the way down to First Grade, once again I had no choice. After I had taught both grades and levels of students for a few years I decided that good teaching is what produces the best results from most of the students whether or not "gifted" or "special". Also, about 8 years after my last 6th grade class a former student came back to visit me. He told me that I gave him more work than he got after he left my class and went to middle school. I asked him if he knew why that was. He didn't so I told him that several parents complained after the first month of school and wanted me to give them more work so I did. About 10% of the parents were the biggest problem that I experienced. They were never satisfied. You could rarely please them and they were very demanding and not very supportive. The other 90% let you do your job and respected teaching. I was always very, very grateful for them. This applied to both 6th and first grade for the almost 20 years that I taught.