OK, I've actually read the article now
I agree with the premise that we should be able to raise the bar at which *all* of our children are educated and that, in turn, will raise achievement overall. I don't think that necessarily an increase in "10% id'd as gifted" to "15-20%" means much... at least not from a gifted point of view... I dunno... I get a little lost in the interpretation of statistics here based on what is considered "gifted"... but that's a whole other post lol! I'm guessing what's happened is more in line with they've increased the percentage of kids who are scoring in the top quartile of standardized testing in their state, and that's not a bad thing at all
Just not the same thing as saying they are increasing the number of intellectually gifted students. I *do* think intellectually gifted kids are often not identified within at-risk populations (minority, low income, 2E etc) and spreading this "every child is smart" philosophy across schools might help id more of the previously unidentified gifted students.
On a slight tangent, we've had our kids in an optional school that is project-based learning - in theory they are aiming at somewhat the same goal, but in practice it all comes down to individual teachers and their will (and ability) to inspire. The school also had high aspirations that every child would have the opportunity to work to their ability level in this type of project-based learning setup, and instead it really never rose above teaching to the middle-ability group.
Our district pull-outs were a little bit better (at least in our experience). Not great and not ability-level for HG and PG kids, but our ds really loved the program, I think not so much because of the peers (which I think was good for him! - but from what I understand the kids were mostly MG and maybe they still didn't feel like intellectual peers?) but... I think what ds loved was that the teachers knew the abilities of each child (MG/HG/PG) and they respected that and I think it showed in their interactions with the students, in the types of questions they asked, the challenges they gave them, in how they listened etc. I'm not sure how to explain it! In any event, back in the regular classroom, project-based, creative projects that they were - the teachers had an attitude about "giftedness" as proponents of the "all children are smart" theory... which played out such that although they acknowledged the high ability kids' ideas etc, they didn't give them opportunity to grow them. I'm so not saying what's on my mind very clearly - sorry!
Thanks for posting the link
polarbear
