I am still fighting the battle at The New York Times website. I made the following comment to the October 6, 2010, Opinionator column "Waiting for Super Principals" by David Brooks and Gail Collins.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/waiting-for-super-principals/

My comment:
http://community.nytimes.com/commen...-super-principals/?permid=122#comment122

America's public schools need to redefine the concept of special education.

Currently, the privilege of special education is limited to the bottom end students � those who are 1) functionally illiterate, 2) slow learners, 3) emotionally disturbed, 4) intellectually compromised by defect or injury, and/or 5) not fluent in English. Special education is needs-based, but the acceptable "needs" are very narrowly defined, and are only defined as deficiencies. This limited narrow definition is simply wrong � and is morally wrong at that. The necessary correction would have to identify those with excesses as being just as needy as those with deficiencies, meaning: special education would respond to the needs of the top end students, too � the geniuses, the profoundly gifted, and those who are able to excel in the most challenging academic courses out of pluck, hard work, and sheer determination.

Much would be quickly accomplished if the National Education Standards in America were redefined by replacing the thinking that formed �No Child Left Behind� with the thinking that forms "Every Child 21st-Century-Literate at No Less Than Grade Level While Being Actively Challenged and Fully Facilitated to Achieve Personal Potentials in All Core Academics." Furthermore, an additional clarifying National Education Standard should require: Students Must Be Advanced to the Academic Level at Which They Can Succeed While Being Challenged.

See: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/81675.html#Post81675

A free 13-year public school education is now provided according to U.S. law, but it is wrongly interpreted as K-12 according to the standard curriculum. If my proposed new thinking were adopted, a 13-year commitment would actually become a 13-year commitment, even for America�s most brilliant young people.

I have proposed a nationwide three-year public high school for those young people who are exceptionally brilliant in mathematics and the physical sciences: http://nasa-academy-of-the-physical-sciences.blogspot.com/

Please read my proposal, and then do what you can to implement it. The future of America could depend on it.

Steven A. Sylwester