The other day I heard that California has about 1000 school districts. I wonder how many of these have some form (IQ or achievement based) of gifted program. I wonder how many accept GATE funds from the State of California. I wonder how much those funds amount to. I wonder how many use those funds for gifted, since about 8 years ago the legislature said they could apply for GATE funding but use it to buy band uniforms instead. If I or someone gets ambitious, some of this could be revealed through public records requests, and/or legwork and research. It would also be interesting to see how the above has changed year by year. My guess is that "we're losing" in California, and that the above statistics are going from bad to worse.

Hi thx1138 -

I think that the new change in how GATE is funded (LCFF) means that school districts do not even have to fund GATE programs anymore (although the GATE office in our district stated that all schools were required to have a GATE program) I guess it doesn't matter if they are funded.. Instead the districts make the determination about how much goes to funding gifted programs. http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/gt/lw/

http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/eb/gateprogramfaq.asp (in this article, they state pretty openly that schools can use funding for gifted or for band uniforms .

I agree that this does not bode well for our kids.

http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/School-funding-leaves-gifted-students-behind-3265829.php

I'm in California in one of the largest school districts. My children went to one of the top (if not the top) elementary schools in the district and there was no actual gifted program visible at any time. I was told by the GATE office that all schools MUST have a gifted program- but the only thing I ever saw was GATE identification via OLSAT and intellectual testing. My understanding also is at least in our district they no longer favor pull out programs (which I understand, I did not like being pulled out when I was in GATE because the other kids would then tease me for it) instead they do in-class differentiation. There was no real differentiation unless a teacher did it on their own (I only saw one teacher do this myself), and any kid got it if they were operating at a higher level.

I spoke to a friend whose son was identified HG in 4th and he got no differentiation in 5th (and who said he really didn't learn anything new that entire year). If you spoke to the Principal you were told that the whole school was run like a gifted school (and the quality of education was very very high and likely many many children there were MG). However that said, for the most part the children who were identified HG did not seem to be suffering and had fond memories of the school.

In our district there are also both gifted/high ability and highly gifted magnets, which based on the fact that they receive magnet funding may be better choices for gifted kids with regard to funding than even the gifted programs within public schools (however I am not sure what the rules are regarding magnet funding), but of course you have to have the points and be selected - but at least with the Highly Gifted magnets there is always space and they don't really require points because they just don't get enough kids qualifying for the seats.

Our excellent public school district in northern California is in the process of dismantling our GATE program because it "isn't fair." It's an upper-income, educationally savvy area. The problem is that in the junior highs, the only honors classes are through the gifted program, which will be gone in a year or so. Nobody seems too concerned that we will then have no honors classes in junior high and nothing in high school.

What isn't fair is having a child waste their time in school without learning something new every day.
NAGC - Gifted Children's Bill of Rights (Del Siegle, NAGC President, 2007-2009)
NAGC - webpage beginning with the idea of learning something new everyday

Here I'll add that I'm aware of teachers/schools who require students to complete a graded assignment in which they write something new they learned that day. When a child truthfully states they did not learn something new that day, their grade suffers. Therefore most children are quickly intimidated into "creative writing" in which they craft a lie about something new they've learned.

YIKES! I'm concerned.

Is the cancellation of the GATE program honors classes well known or is it being kept rather quiet?

Are parents feeling intimidated into silence and/or coerced into not gathering?

Have parents been told that there are plans to teach children in their zone of proximal development (ZPD) without the formal, former GATE program honors classes?

Is something essentially being renamed to make it more "politically correct"?

I count 1098 public school districts in California, based on this website http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/si/ds/pubschls.asp

See also http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/gt/gt/ and http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/gt/gt/gatefiscalfaqs.asp

I started another thread, related in the sense that, I interpret the dismantling of GATE (in California) funding, as evidence that the "gifted movement" is losing ground, and asking if "personalized learning" is a pragmatic fallback. http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....ew/1/Gifted_and_the_Personalized_Le.html

Perhaps our benefators the Davidsons would have an informed opinion on this notion, having developed learning software last century, and then becoming philanthropists for gifted.

I followed up and California government continued to be helpful, noting that we... can access numbers of GATE students in DataQuest for 1998-99 through 2008-09, the last year that CDE collected such statistics. Here is the link http://data1.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/ and the subject for the search would be “enrollment”.

This would really only be to draw a graph proving or disproving my hypothesis or interpretation that gifted is "losing" in California.

Yes, even when GATE programs were funded, were they based on native potential or on achievement. Some districts still have them, there are still a couple magnet schools (e.g. Merman) but it will be harder to collect statistics going forward, since there is no centralized source.

Personally, I'd like to at least have a GATE program. Only then can we start second-guessing it.

Au contraire!

There are forum threads which raise awareness of centralized data collection, ushered in by common core... ostensibly to verify that common core standards are being followed faithfully.

While data is being collected on a larger scale and stored centrally, it may be difficult for parents to access the information.