Please consider not accepting things as they are: a limited number of seats for advanced academics, combined with a competitive, divide-and-conquer, winner-take-all mentality.
We are all smart people here, and we can agree that there is market stability when supply=demand.
Instead of playing into the game, parents can unite and request more seats for advanced academics. Increase the supply of advanced academic seats to meet the demand. (Here next to the word "demand" I will also add NEED, an important concept discussed earlier on this thread. Hat tip to HK for identifying that. Great contribution, as always.)
I agree, especially with the winner-take-all mentality. I also see huge barriers to implementation. I'm sorry to say that many educators I've met aren't knowledgeable at all about the needs or capabilities of gifted students.
For example, I can claim that my DD needs advanced academics, but the school might not believe me, because the teachers and administrators are either clueless about giftedness or have a rigid, exaggerated definition of it (e.g. "That article in
Time said that Janie was writing symphonies when she was 3 and yours wasn't, ergo, she's not gifted). Or maybe they acknowledge that she's smart, but they might assume that a bit of pre-algebra used as spice on a 5th grade curriculum is advanced. Well, it is...but not advanced enough for DD9.
On top of that in the public school system are the demands of NCLB and its forced focus on the bottom performers. This is huge.
