Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments How are gifted identified in your schools?

The link you give sends me to the post above, so I'd be interested to see what post you're referring to.

I think it is consistent to say:

-Standards are minimums, not maximums, in every case, including NCLB.

-We should hold schools accountable to minimum standards for every child.

-We should also encourage schools to find ways to help every child who can, exceed the standards.

-We are not doing this because we lack the most important resource: the political will required to make really hard choices, like keeping children back, moving kids ahead, firing teachers, etc.

-Inability to exceed standards results from lack of resources (including political will, which is the real problem in the US) and inequality coming in and going out of the system, not from the fact that we have standards. Otherwise, countries with standards and national curricula would invariably do worse. But they almost always do much better.

I agree that lived experience may impact the curriculum, but if that is the case, it is only because the school previously was not providing high enough standards for the general education population in the first place. In other words, this will only impact you if your child was receiving too much in comparison to the other kids in the first place. They don't have to take anything away if they were already meeting the standards.