Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Sad day.

The school district next door to us just shuttered its TAG program citing the academic rigor it provides for all students.
They plan to allow all students currently in the program to finish the year and will allow them to stay at the school they are at but in mainstream classes for next year and beyond.
I feel for those families and hope we can make room for their students at our TAG school.

Unfortunately some have seen this as a growing trend, which may continue to accelerate by closing programs in vast numbers ever more rapidly. Fueling this may be cost factors from demands of excessive identification/qualification testing and need for programs/schools/districts to defend themselves from allegations of bias and threats of lawsuits.

There is often a delicate balance between ability to optimally serve an individual student and optimally serve the student body as a whole. Reasonable compromise on both sides may not occur.

As an analogy or metaphor I offer this article from a Starbucks blog dated Feb 15, 2012 discussing the price and value of a free drink at Starbucks. A customer wanted to maximize what he could receive for free (link-
http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2012/02/does-the-most-expensive-starbucks-drink-cost-2360.html)

That is very sad.

In addition to the obvious budgetary considerations that may be a driving force, I wonder how much of this is Common Core providing "rigor for all" that is being misinterpreted by administrators as "built-in differentiation" that obviates the need for anything more.



Of course, AP/Honors has been used this way at the high school level for quite some time, but seeing it creep downward into elementary is very upsetting to me.

Of course, if the district can reach that conclusion, they didn't get it in the first place.

Alternatively, they do get it, and they are lying.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.


This has proven invaluable to me in my lifetime, as I've dealt with educational administrators from all angles.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

In this situation, like many, the level of stupidity that would be required is too extraordinary. Malice is by far the more plausible explanation.

On the other hand, the Bell curve is symmetrical ...

Quite the conundrum via Occam's Razor, isn't it?



Because a conspiracy of any scale is hard to fathom, as well, given the overwhelming evidence of a lack of-- er-- well, extraordinary intellect, let's just call it.

So I'm not sure WHAT the least convoluted or simplest explanation actually is.

It probably involves committees. And meetings. A lot of meetings. With committees.

I suspect a combination of dumb plus ignorant. Most people don't question their beliefs and education programs don't emphasize giftedness. Well, a lot of them could be described as ignoring giftedness.

So you have people who've never been taught about giftedness and are running on assumptions that fit for the vast majority of their students.

Yes, the Bell Curve IS symmetrical.

While it saddens me tremendously, I think that someone just took a long hard look at just the numbers in a 'knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing' kind of way and thought that there are just not enough people in the right hand tail of the Bell Curve to justify spending so much on them.

Neglecting to notice the assymetric 'value' that people in the right hand tail bring to the population as a whole.

Or unvalue, depending on the person.

It is looking like ds6's school is going to do away with the only bright spot on the horizon on the grounds that everyone gains from challenge therefore everyone should be challenged together. The teacher running it is hoping to keep it going but he did pretty much say the writing was on the wall.

Ouch. I'm sorry, puffin.

I've been stunned by community response. The families that use the TAG program are heartbroken and the families who don't have been heard saying things like
"Good, it was so unfair." and "Finally! What a waste of money that program was!"
One mother told me that if they continued with TAG they might as well make a program for lazy, sloppy children so her child can have a special education too. I was horrified. She was trying to be funny but the sentiment seemed to be that TAG makes her feel badly about her children's achievements so she is glad to see it go.
So weird! I guess I really do live in utopia over here.

It is just streamed maths over 2 years which would mean he could possibly work a year ahead for 1 year but if he did get that I may be able to pushe for subject acceleration based on that. I actually think it may keep going for one more year - I hope so I was counting on it to get him through next year.

I am going on the assumption that the top year four group will be working at year 5 level so that is two years. I think he is working at year 3 level in year 2 though but it is hard to tell and it doesn't seem that challenging. The streaming is only for the arithmetic portions.