California's data puts it in between those two, at just over $86 per gifted student.
One thing that I think is worth highlighting, though, is that CA has identified over 500,000 students as gifted-- as compared with Oregon's 44,000. Washington has similar numbers of students identified as gifted (49,000).
That is significant for one (huge) reason-- there are as many gifted students in CA as there are
students in the entire Oregon system. That means that finding peers with similar LOG is simply going to be harder if your pool is only 10% as large. Is that real, though? One might reasonably ask if CA is over-identifying gifted students, which I think is a fair question.
The answer? In Oregon, identification amounts to just over 7% of the state's K-12 students. As I think I noted earlier, in my own district this is something more like 25-30% depending upon the school (yes, we're a smart bunch around here as well), and the criteria are set by state law (I just think the bar is set far too low). Washington's only identifying about 5% of their students as "gifted" and finally, California identifies about 8% of their student population. So
maybe there is some over-identification, but it's probably not too bad.
There is one important difference in CA, however, and that is that they also go to the trouble of differentiating between MG and PG students, something which neither WA nor OR does. Needless to say, that's a fairly significant difference, assuming that there are services provided in the first place (which, as I think $7-8 per pupil annually would argue... there aren't in my state
). Of course, with 25-30% of your district being identified, I suppose that adds up to... well, a new gymnasium floor, perhaps.
Hopefully the data here provides some food for thought, or at least a way to dig further.
(Data is from 2010-2011--
http://nagc.org/DataMapbyState.aspx )
