http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bet...er-2012/The-Gifted-Left-Behind/index.php
The Gifted: Left Behind?
With a new curriculum aimed at meeting the needs of more students, parents of advanced learners fear their kids are getting short shrift
BY JULIE RASICOT
Bethesda Magazine
September-October 2012

...

For years, the national debate in education has centered on No Child Left Behind. But in Montgomery County, a place where more than a third of all public school students are deemed gifted, the debate has been given a different spin.

Last year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) introduced Curriculum 2.0, which calls for elementary school students of all skill levels to solve problems—math problems, in particular—together in a single classroom, rather than being segregated according to ability.

It’s a shift in priority that has parents of gifted students steamed.

...

“Why should only kids who struggle get their needs met?” asks Nancy Green of Bethesda, an MCPS parent who is executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children. “That doesn’t sound like America to me, at the most basic level.”

MCPS officials counter that dramatic shifts in Montgomery County’s demographics have created a greater need: Minorities have become the majority, and increasing numbers of low-income and immigrant students require more ser­​vices from schools. Because of that, Superintendent Joshua Starr says, MCPS has more kids who need help “getting to standard than we do kids who need to be pushed beyond grade level.”

...

(sigh) That won't work.

Gifted kids struggle too, and the uninitiated need to know this.

It's not about better or worse, smarter or less smart. It's about a cognitively and socially appropriate environment. Gifted kids who don't have their intellectual and emotional sensitivities understood and supported suffer just as much as the remedial learners who can't learn mainstream curriculum.

We're outnumbered, unfortunately, and I think it may be a losing battle.

I agree, that kind of rhetoric will never fly.

The larger question in my mind is always this; why, exactly, are we assuming that the GOALS should be identical for each child?

Even if the goals are/should be similar for all children, why are we assuming that the methods of gaining those milestones must be?

What, fundamentally, is public education obliging itself to do for each individual child? Is this furthering those goals? Why/why not?

The answers then become self-evident.

Because uniform goals and uniform methods enable very high quality production methods to be developed and allows potential problems to be effectively addressed.

Look at McDonalds, for an example.

When you eat a a McDonalds in NYC you are eating the *exact same* type of McHeartAttack as you eat in LA.

The public *loves* this uniformity, which is reflected in the earnings from the McDonalds corporate entity.

Think of the problems that are encountered if you start using *different* goals and *different* methods for each McDonalds restaurant. How could you *know* what you were really ordering when you traveled to another area? How could you *know* that the money you were spending would be virtually guaranteed to provide a satisfying sensory and gastronomical experience? You simply wouldn't know!

Do you want to live in that kind of world? Make a picture in your mind? What do you see?

It's a profoundly confusing, chaotic, and deeply unsatisfying world, isn't it?

{laughing} Oh--ohh-- STOP.... must-- breathe--

yes, I see.

I guess, then, the question becomes; is the world a better place if McDonald's is the sole (or even "major") arbiter of... er... food?



At what point does differentiation in education become obviously necessary, though? Is it fifth grade? 12th grade? Graduate education?

After all, McDonalds is unlikely to begin offering fine food-and-wine pairings anytime soon, no matter how many assemly-line lattes and salads they can sell in addition to burgers. The world does need wedding receptions and romantic celebration dinners in places with white tablecloths. Well, maybe it doesn't, but you catch my drift.

There is a reason why ordering superb salmon or Dungeness crab is problematic in Omaha, NE. Seems wrong to say that those of us in the Pacific NW ought not have widespread access to them either, though...

Taking JonLaw's post seriously just for a moment, this Dewey-esque set of assumptions is probably not that far off the mark, however. The problem with that view of an 'industrialized' model of education is that children are less like frozen hamburger and more like Dungeness crab, really great hush-puppies, and Carolina BBQ. Regional specialties got that way for a reason, and their uniqueness or narrow availability doesn't devalue them in the least.

Which would people rather drink-- Gallo red? Or a remarkable Willamette Valley Pinot Noir? (Or insert other favorite varietal wine.) Hey, Night Train has great quality control, too... (ick)

I'm actually okay in a world without McDonald's, but I know why many people are not.

___________________________________________________________________

And in all seriousness, MoN's points are good ones.

I've been meaning to look at the studies on tracking for a while (for work). Maybe I'll get around to it sooner rather than later.

Would love to know what you find, ultramarina. If only I'd known since my kids were gifted that they weren't supposed to struggle, school would have been so much easier from the start. Sigh. I cannot believe that kind of comment came out of someone with National Director in her title.

What I learned in college when I was studying for a degree to teach special ed is that special ed is for any child whose needs are not met by the traditional classroom setting to such a severe degree as to be debilitating and in such a way that the possibility for an adequate education was not possible. That was not limited to kids on only one end of the IQ spectrum but covered kids throughout the spectrum. There are plenty of kids with a severe learning disability and a "normal" IQ. IQ is simply one measuring tool that is used to determine level of need.

But that was the 80's.

There is the thread (that ultramarina has posted in)
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....8614/Meta_analysis_of_research_on_a.html
Meta-analysis of research on ability grouping

The paper

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/InequityInEquity.pdf
Inequity in equity: How "equity" can lead to inequity for high-potential students.
Benbow, Camilla Persson; Stanley, Julian C.
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol 2(2), Jun 1996, 249-292
Abstract
Over the past three decades, the achievement of waves of American students with high intellectual potential has declined as a result of inequity in educational treatment. This inequity is the result of an extreme form of egalitarianism within American society and schools, which involves the pitting of equity against excellence rather than promoting both equity and excellence, anti-intellectualism, the "dumbing down" of the curriculum, equating aptitude and achievement testing with elitism, the attraction to fads by schools, and the insistence of schools to teach all students from the same curriculum at the same level. In this article we provide recommendations for creating positive change--recommendations that emphasize excellence for all, that call for responsiveness to individual differences, and that suggest basing educational policies on well-grounded research findings in psychology and education. Educational policies that fail to take into account the vast range of individual differences among students--as do many that are currently in us--are doomed to be ineffective.

discusses the research on "detracking" , starting on p16 of the PDF.

A simple way to find more recent research is to search in Google Scholar for papers that cite the relevant papers in this article.

I've noticed a trend of people using "high achievement" when promoting a particular pov. Statistically the Z2+ gifted are only noise in the sorts of studies that talk about the benefits of heterogenous. The other thing I find deceptive is talking about an achievement gap. Because rates of learning are different, a rounded successful program will increase gaps. The relevant discussion is if the rates themselves are improving.

From the first article: "On its face, it would appear to be an exercise in students working together to solve a problem. But a proponent of gifted segregation might view it differently: One child readily overcomes a group challenge while others watch." I remember that, it made Biology more fun to have my own two personal lab assistants.

With enough effort, and a hop in Mr. Peabody's Curriculum 2.0, they can all work together at McDonald's.

Bingo.

A good program means that the faster learners will *increase* the performance gap.

So a good program will show increasing *divergence* between the students.

Which in bureaucratic world means Epic Fail.

No need to tell me how to find more recent papers, Bostonian. I do this all day long. There is a vast wealth of research on this subject. The issues is going to be finding some good meta-analyses that are coming from people without an axe to grind (of any sort). For instance, the "more recent review" you linked to in the previous thread is not a meta-analysis, nor even a study. It's clearly an opinion piece. It's interesting reading, but I suspect it was heavily cherry-picked.

You know, I've been thinking that what I have *not* seen (or at least don't remember seeing) is a study/discussion in which actual gifted (and hopefully successful) adults say what was best and worst about their K-12 education. This might end up being just a collection of anecdotes, and since the educational system has changed a lot over the past few decades it might not be entirely applicable to the current systems, but I think it would be interesting at least. I've heard stories, but usually just about one person at a time.

A previous thread on tracking, which has been discussed in this thread, is

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....0001/All_Together_Now_the_need_for_.html
All Together Now? (the need for ability grouping)

The article at the Education Next site received many comments.

The Kulik paper at the beginning of the old thread and the Benbow article linked to yesterday both had 13 pages of references. The Kulik paper summarizes results of a lot of previous studies.


It seems odd to call them opinion pieces when they have so many references to support author claims, as well as so many summaries of other studies.

I remember going down this road with you in the thread about TJ High School. You kept asking for peer-reviewed studies that supported links between better nutrition and better performance in school. Nothing I provided was good enough for you, yet you didn't provide any alternatives. I'm wondering what your motivation was at this point, and what you're looking for. I'm sure you're not asking us to find or analyze papers for you.

Maybe you should provide some papers and an analysis.

I'd like to make a comment based on this quote from the article:

*********************************************

She was so bored that she no longer wanted to go to school. So her mother, Lisa Clemans-Cope, spoke to Bradley Hills about providing more challenging work. She was told that her advanced learner would get it. But “what we saw was so sparse and totally inadequate,” she says.

Finally, Clemans-Cope signed up Eleanor for an entrance exam for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University’s competitive program for students in grades two through eight with exceptional math and verbal reasoning skills.

Eleanor passed easily, but her parents found the courses too expensive. She now attends weekly math sessions at a private after-school academic enrichment program with her best friend and several neighborhood kids. It costs her parents about $100 a month.

“You have to do something if your kid is not learning,” Clemans-Cope says. “We cannot sit and do nothing while [the school system works] things out.”

*********************************************

Schools can make sure no one gets ahead in school (although this is wrong), but they end up pushing the ability-grouped, advanced classes in math and other subjects into the private realm. Lower-income and minority students will be under-represented in gifted programs and in "top track" classes, because there is an achievement gap, but the disparity may be even larger in private classes, because parents must have the means, the background knowledge, and the desire to seek them out. We know what AMC, AOPS, CTY, EPGY, SET etc. stand for. I think most of the general public do not.

Exactly. We tried a free charter school last year, and it didn't have a lot to offer a HG+ kid. We can afford to homeschool via CTY and other private options, so we are.

IMO, the public schools should be providing better opportunities to lower income gifted students (if they did, the higher income people might stick around).

Val, that very thing is happening through the magnet program at the Title 1 school our son attends. The K-2 aspect is open to any student, and the school is taking lessons learned through the program and carrying them into the non-magnet classrooms. Though there are a couple of public HG+ options in the city, we are hoping the school can keep up as I think they have a great model.

PDF about the program:
http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/mediaroom/...mersion%20and%20Talent%20Development.pdf

I think that higher income people tend to try to avoid lower income people, just on general principle.

In the minds of many better off people, poor people = crime and/or lack of appropriate culture.

Either that or poor people = ability for better off people to provide charity to the unfortunate.

I can say lots of non-PC things too, but I don't see how this advances this discussion.

I take it that you don't have to play the school redistricting game on an annual basis.

Well, mon, that's your answer. The elite priveledged kids will still get their advanced education. By not offering advanced track options in the public school you're only denying disadvantaged youth from excelling because the wealthy elitist parents will still pay for their childrens education elsewhere, or tutoring.

Wait. That's probably not right. I was just thinking that their video's not right, showing a perfectly racially diverse classroom with a small class size of engaged students and I jumped on a knee-jerk reactionary response that tugs at the same heart strings. We should probably just stick with the truth, we're just parents trying to do the best for our children. In the case of the gifted children it means not clipping their wings while they're developing. All children deserve the chance to grow and thrive in their own childhood.

Eta: the video's not right because that kind of small, engaged, racially diverse classroom they depicted IS not what they are trying to preserve... Really?! That's a picture of the public school class that ability grouping would destroy?! Uh-huh.

You know how some people don't want to call children gifted or advanced because they want to call it something else?  I was thinking maybe if you kept calling advanced, but you called the other kids novice and beginning.  Would that be less offensive?  That implies that all children are on the same path to being educated.  
Or is it not the word gifted that irks some people, just the idea that some kids are ahead of others?  Like, does everybody have to quit being ahead to make it ok? 

This train of thought is in response to this article Bostonian posted "equality vs excellence"
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/InequityInEquity.pdf


And this "anti-ability grouping PSA"
Posted by Mon.
http://www.tolerance.org/blog/students-beware-ability-grouping-ahead

Eta: still reading the article.
It seems that some people feel that identifying high-ability students is used to impede rather than support. I just thought of a new way to track kids. You could have one class that wants to learn and one class that wants to do the bare minimum. The teacher that likes to differentiate can have the students that want to learn, whatever their abilities, and they support the students and don't hold them back. The students are self selected.

Interesting idea--but I think it might suffer some of the same issues as other tracking systems once the parents figured out what was going on--I think most parents would not want their kid in the 'bare minimum' group. So then I can imagine all the parents who care raising heck about getting their kid into the 'wants to learn' class regardless of how their kid feels.

Re lack of political correctness, here's another interesting idea that I heard awhile ago but haven't seen work yet. A speaker re 2e kids suggested that one rationale that might help advocates of gifted education is that minority/underprivileged/socioeconomically challenged 2e kids tend to be under-identified, and screening for and helping such kids might be useful to schools and teachers under the No-Child-Left-Behind incentive structure. I don't know how the recent changes to No-Child-Left-Behind might affect this, but it was an interesting idea that these 2e kids might be particularly under-served, and that including them as a reason for gifted identification and education might be helpful in advocating for gifted kids generally, as well as being a very good thing to do.