This article is a few months old, but I just came across it and found it very interesting. Any thoughts?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2014636532_webgifted01.htmlHere's a brilliant idea: if you want smarter kids, treat them as if they're smart.
A U.S. Department of Education evaluation of a North Carolina program shows that when at-risk students are taught as if they are gifted and talented, they are likely to perform better academically...
The study found that within three years, the number of children identified by their school districts as being academically and intellectually gifted ranged from 15 percent to 20 percent...The year the project began, no third-graders from the schools in the study had been identified as gifted...
The rest is at the link.
My initial thoughts are
here. It does give me something to think about as the 15-20% # is about our local GT identification # and I've always maintained that it is way too high not due to an unusual distribution in our local community. However, I wonder if we should just be teaching differently for most kids and stratifying for GT differentiation at a different point than we do now or offering different levels of GT programming (which I really doubt will happen).
