I don't necessarily disagree, but thought I'd point out the difficulty of our changing perspective. That is - you remember schools 30 years ago from the perspective of a student, might be interesting to ask what your parents thought.
Hmm, yes. But I still think that being as objective as one can be about the programs in place then vs. what's going on now, things are worse now. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't hear about much progress. And my mom was VERY active in the field back in the day. She was an educator herself (as was her mother before her) and she started a support group/extracurricular enrichment program for GT kids in our area. She definitely knew her stuff. She was even elected to the school board.
You know, perhaps the fact that someone focusing on GT ed COULD be elected to the school board supports my point! That would never happen in this neighborhood today. I guarantee it.
I think Tammy makes a good point. The drive to make school uniform is what happened to clustering, I think. "If everyone can't be in the Bluebird group, then no one can be...You're not special!"
(Not that clustering would be enough for these kids, of course. But at least it was better than making teachers try to teach all kids the same material at different levels, all at the same time. That just seems like a total failure as a system.)
