Gifted and Talented discussions at 1/27/14 and 2/24/14 SOMSD BOE meetings

BaseballMom said:

JCSO said:

cleg said:

I hate the phrase "gifted and talented." I think but for circumstances mostly beyond a child's control that they are all gifted and talented. There needs to be a less elitist way of saying this.

How is it elitist to recognize the obvious fact that there are kids in the world, and in our community, who are "gifted and talented"? 

That means they're smarter, or more precocious, or more creative, or in some other way well ahead of your kids and mine. 

Are we so small that we need to pretend these kids' right to a free and appropriate education is really only the right to a free slog through what they already understand?

Are you forgetting this isn't Pingry?

That's a truth I'm confronted with quite often.  Not sure what it has to do with anything, however. 

susan1014 said:

ctrzaska said:

Apparently we live in Lake Wobegon.

 Where all of the children are exactly one standard deviation above average.

Tell me about it.  Any minute now the tired "equity and excellence" mantra will seep into the conversation like a spill under a napkin.   Wait for it.

cleg said:

I hate the phrase "gifted and talented." I think but for circumstances mostly beyond a child's control that they are all gifted and talented. There needs to be a less elitist way of saying this.

When "gifted and talented" is used loosely, I think you may have a point, cleg. Sometimes, though, the term -- "gifted," anyway -- is specifically applied to students so exceptional that learning in a typical classroom is a struggle. They have special needs, but those words tend to be reserved for a different group of students. Which might also speak to your point.

JCSO said:

Are we so small that we need to pretend these kids' right to a free and appropriate education is really only the right to a free slog through what they already understand?

I'm small enough to believe this: An adequate education is a right. One appropriate for abilities beyond that is a goal.

Apologies if this has been addressed as I haven't been following so closely of late, but how does the cancellation of the IB program play in all this? 

It slid by very quickly last night during budget discussion at BOE meeting you may have missed it but there is no longer a G&T coordinator position yet somehow we are to believe there will be a G&T program next year.  

Makes sense.  Maybe it will just run itself.

This ex-post article was the first I heard about eliminating the advanced ELA program. This program has been a huge success. Are we going to eliminate every program that the bottom 10% of students can't handle?

The Lake Wobegone meme is and has always been silly. 

Average values are not evenly distributed. 

How surprising should it be to learn that in a community where the adults have a  high percentage of post-graduate degrees, and work in the financial, education and creative sectors, and earn in the top 15-10% nationally, the kids are pretty bright?

BaseballMom said:

Are you forgetting this isn't Pingry?

Well actually, it isn't. 

But (pace my friend Lynne C.) so what? If we have a wider spread, that hardly negates the needs of the kids in the right-hand tail!

DaveSchmidt said:

I'm small enough to believe this: An adequate education is a right. One appropriate for abilities beyond that is a goal.

Oh? 

And who will be deciding which abilities are "beyond that"?

JCSO said:

The Lake Wobegone meme is and has always been silly. 

Average values are not evenly distributed. 

How surprising should it be to learn that in a community where the adults have a  high percentage of post-graduate degrees, and work in the financial, education and creative sectors, and earn in the top 15-10% nationally, the kids are pretty bright?

 It's not surprising in the least.   That's my point.  That some would think that all kids in this district are basically flatlined across an even spectrum is laughable.

JCSO said:

DaveSchmidt said:

I'm small enough to believe this: An adequate education is a right. One appropriate for abilities beyond that is a goal.

Oh? 

And who will be deciding which abilities are "beyond that"?

 Those that determine what "adequate" means, I guess.  I'm still grappling with "thorough and efficient".

JCSO said:

DaveSchmidt said:

I'm small enough to believe this: An adequate education is a right. One appropriate for abilities beyond that is a goal.

Oh? 

And who will be deciding which abilities are "beyond that"?

The answer was here under my napkin just a minute ago.

School boards, administrators and teachers, with increasing direction from state and federal officials, decide there are certain things that all students in a district need to learn to lead decent, productive lives after graduation. My child has a right to those basics.

It behooves a district to also decide on a range of options and opportunities that will benefit only some students in some cases, and other students in others. I may applaud them all, but nothing in this category is mine or my child's to demand by rights.

Why the distinction? It helps me keep priorities in perspective.

(As ctrzaska notes, of course, there's a broader discussion about what an adequate public primary and secondary education should comprise. We all have our ideas, and Jude's latest posts on the topic, in particular, are worth consideration. Suffice it to say that for me, freedom from slogging through already understood material is not among the fundamental requirements.)

Dave Schmidt:

School boards, administrators and teachers, with increasing direction from state and federal officials, decide there are certain things that all students in a district need to learn to lead decent, productive lives after graduation. My child has a right to those basics.

The state mandates every child receive a free and appropriate (not "adequate") education. That applies to kids with disabilities and also to kids with extraordinary abilities, which school districts are required by law both to identify and to address. So if you are content to permit the state to say what the basics are, and if the state has made it clear (albeit not terribly enforceable) that for gifted and talented kids "the basics" are not sufficient, then it would appear that in this respect you don't defer to educator expertise or legal authority.

Why then do you defer to educator expertise and authority in determining what "the basics" are? Something tells me you wouldn't, if you found the basics inadequate (or wrong, e.g., that evolution is just a theory, or that history consists mainly of retelling the story of the Alamo, or that sixth grade math is all anyone really needs). 

It behooves a district to also decide on a range of options and opportunities that will benefit only some students in some cases, and other students in others. I may applaud them all, but nothing in this category is mine or my child's to demand by rights.

Why the distinction? It helps me keep priorities in perspective.

Well, if your priorities are not those inherent in universal public education, then that makes some sort of sense. But what you are, in essence, arguing is that public education is only for kids who aren't exceptionally bright. Can't say I think that's helpful to the future of public education.

Suffice it to say that for me, freedom from slogging through already understood material is not among the fundamental requirements.

Given that education is compulsory, that winds up being quite an authoritarian assertion. (Your child must attend school; we will decide what she needs to know; you must bear an unaffordable financial burden to opt out of our decision about what we're obligated to offer; you will pay school taxes regardless.) 

But the reality is that children are, of necessity, routinely taught at different levels. To make an exception for the very able is discriminatory. There are, IMO, no priorities that make that just. 

I believe there are. Just my opinion, too, which I get the impression you don't have much regard for. Why care that I think?

Why care that I think?

Do you vote?

Really, it's just a personal tic. I find it disturbing when people who define themselves as liberal or progressive adopt illiberal viewpoints in the service of an ostensible greater Good.

Regarding Texas or, say, a troubled district like Camden, yes, I would fight for what I considered an adequate education, just as you are doing.

One hopes there's more to education than not being Camden? (I have a friend who is an AP Biology teacher in the Dallas suburbs, and from what I can tell TX is not such a backwater these days.)

ctrzaska said:

BaseballMom said:

JCSO said:

cleg said:

I hate the phrase "gifted and talented." I think but for circumstances mostly beyond a child's control that they are all gifted and talented. There needs to be a less elitist way of saying this.

How is it elitist to recognize the obvious fact that there are kids in the world, and in our community, who are "gifted and talented"? 

That means they're smarter, or more precocious, or more creative, or in some other way well ahead of your kids and mine. 

Are we so small that we need to pretend these kids' right to a free and appropriate education is really only the right to a free slog through what they already understand?

Are you forgetting this isn't Pingry?

That's a truth I'm confronted with quite often.  Not sure what it has to do with anything, however. 

JCSO said:

BaseballMom said:

Are you forgetting this isn't Pingry?

Well actually, it isn't. 

But (pace my friend Lynne C.) so what? If we have a wider spread, that hardly negates the needs of the kids in the right-hand tail!

 @ctrzaska:  "This isn't Pingry" is a comment made at a BOE meeting by a BOE member some years ago.  @JCSO recalls it was Lynne Crawford ...  I defer to JCSO on that one. 

. I completely agree with both of you. My kids would not be in the G&T category, but I stand 1,000% behind yours and others' insistence that the law be followed, and I think the district's claimed confusion - or foot-dragging - about the implementation of a real G&T is inexcusable. 

I was being facetious (and apparently abstruse) in making my "this isn't Pingry" reference, and, frankly, that comment resonated with me. The school district seemed to peddle to the great middle but IMHO over the years, with deleveling and other things, we're not even doing that. 

I find it particularly outrageous that the school points to a 6th grader who takes 10th or 11th grade math as an example of their what, recognition of giftedness?  Progress in providing a legally-mandated program?  I also know of happen to know a 7th grader who is taking in 11th or 12th grade math at CHS, and frankly I believe that these parents had to go to the mat with the school district to make that happen and that those kids did not achieve that level of advancement without significant private or parental resources.  I know of a former student -- a number of years ago -- who was several years advanced in math but would not have been able to get to the mid-day class at CHS had not the student's mother been able to personally drive the kid from MMS to CHS and back in the middle of the school day.  I also know those parents fought tooth and nail to get what they got. So to hear the district taking credit for allowing a middle schooler to take high school math, and to hold it out as an example of G&T, is ironic, to say the least, but it's what they've got, I guess. 

JCSO said:

Why care that I think?

Do you vote?

Really, it's just a personal tic. I find it disturbing when people who define themselves as liberal or progressive adopt illiberal viewpoints in the service of an ostensible greater Good.

Regarding Texas or, say, a troubled district like Camden, yes, I would fight for what I considered an adequate education, just as you are doing.

One hopes there's more to education than not being Camden? (I have a friend who is an AP Biology teacher in the Dallas suburbs, and from what I can tell TX is not such a backwater these days.)

Texas being shorthand, perhaps unfairly, for the evolution-as-science you mentioned.

Sure I vote. If the intent is to try to sway me to cast it more wisely according to different policy preferences (ETA: or even just to open my eyes to the hypocrisy of however I define myself), I'm open to discussion. While admitting I don't always succeed in holding up my end, I tend to respond better when there's a mutual effort to understand each other. That is my personal tic.

Had no idea about the BOE source of the Pingry reference.  Or maybe I did and my brain just blocked it all out.

Regardless, I'm most definitely going to use your "peddle to the middle" line.

Just FYI, if you check the various state-by-state school ratings, you'll find that Texas is quite a bit higher than many other southern states (and quite a few other states also.)