The following is a comment that I made to Forbes:
http://rate.forbes.com/comments/Com...arters-learning-from-money-managers.htmlThe Forbes article:
What Educators Are Learning From Money Managers
by Daniel Fisher
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0...arters-learning-from-money-managers.htmlInnovative schools collect data, look for small changes, intervene quickly and move resources to the formulas that work.
Posted by Steven_A_Sylwester | 06/07/10 02:19 PM EDT
As much as we need the masses to reach their potential so that the U.S. might have a literate and capable workforce, we need more for the prodigies and the geniuses to reach their potential, too, so that the U.S. might maintain world leadership in discoveries, innovations, and inventions. Ultimately, our success as a nation will be measured by copyrights and by patents - by the economic power we will derive from intellectual property ownership rights.
The American ethos granting "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" tends to be bottom-up in practice in public education, and only lasts as long as the money lasts. Special Education for poor performing students is required by laws that speak of legal rights and fairness, as if excellent performing students can somehow make it on their own while poor performing students are doomed without extraordinary interventions. By comparison, Talented and Gifted (TAG) programs are recommended and endorsed, which means they no longer exist because the money for them ran out a long time ago.
Though a common fallacy believes otherwise, the fact is: prodigy and genius are not reliably the product of privilege. Economic advantage and high social status do not determine giftedness. A genius can be born in poverty.
In the face of it all stand three truths: 1) Special Education students are children at risk, 2) TAG students - especially the prodigies and the geniuses - are children at risk, and 3) the United States of America is a nation at risk. If we ignore any of those "at risk" groups, we do so at our peril - and all three of those groups are interrelated.
I propose a nationwide public high school for our science-minded prodigies and geniuses to be located on the campuses of 150 public research universities across the U.S. I have called the school "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences." My proposal can be read at:
http://nasa-academy-of-the-physical-sciences.blogspot.com/Steven A. Sylwester
