... we failed to craft a narrative to justify supporting gifted children in schools.
I believe the narrative to justify supporting gifted children in schools is this:
For continuing growth and development, kids need:
1)
appropriate academic challenge2)
true peers For typical kids, these needs may be met in a general ed classroom, however for children with higher IQ/giftedness, these needs may not be met without intentional effort in providing advanced curriculum, and grouping for instruction with academic/intellectual peers.
Some negatives which may occur when a child is not learning something new every day include these observations or signs that a child is not appropriately challenged.Now our problem is exponentially worse... our battle is now even more steeply uphill. We are pretty much on our own.
Yes, equal
opportunity has morphed to equal
outcomes, substantiated by a variety of
questionable grading practices, and now is morphing into a concept of
equity which contains a retaliatory and non-negotiable demand that anyone deemed to have "privilege" must be shamed, treated as less-than (aka pariahs), and denied future opportunity. A culture of work ethic, merit, math-facts, science, and correct/incorrect answers is quickly falling by the wayside, replaced with a preference for valuing
feelings and raising the practice of
taking offense to an art form.
Related thread:
Thoughts on work of Drs E Frattura & C Capper? (Sept 2020)
Link -http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/247587/Thoughts_on_work_of_Drs_E_Frat.html#Post247587
Back to the topic of this thread... the Math Test... Allowing qualified students to accelerate in math is one way to meet the needs of gifted pupils, providing appropriate academic challenge in their zone of proximal development (ZPD), and quite possibly also with intellectual peers.