Other districts also have identification procedures SO lax that pretty much anyone whose parents are determined enough can have their child identified as "gifted" and this also has the side benefit of allowing administrators to say (with a straight face) that "all of our coursework* is differentiat-ed/-able" as a reason why no additional differentiation is possible for children at high LOG.
*Well, it would be with some 30% of the students in the district identified as GT, wouldn't it?
Yeah-- there's no programming past regular "gifted" either, and most of THAT is comprised of not-really-rigorous-or-challenging fun or artsy extracurricular enrichment run by a group of cliquey parents who apparently have not only too much time on their hands, but far too much $ as well, and are determined to invest in their kids' status.
Parenting: the Competitive Martha Stewart Edition, if you will. Genuine highly gifted or advanced material? Just doesn't exist. One
does encounter the mind-boggling proposition that there's no difference between a student who scores 95th percentile on a grade-level achievement test and one who scores 99th percentile on an out-of-level one like the SAT or EXPLORE.
But I may just not understand this properly. Yes, that's the only thing that makes sense of this...
While I might well believe that 5% of the district population is top 1-2% given that we live in a Silicon Forest college town, no WAY do I buy that 30% of them have "special" educational needs by virtue of high ability. See, if there WERE that many (and there aren't) then the district would be running a sort of informal magnet school, which isn't the case, judging from what DD's local friends do in school. Her gifted friends, I might add. LOL. Some of them
are actually MG to HG-- and they are bored spitless.
This is how public education works here in Lake Wobegon. Because statistics are just so-- harsh.
