There was no surprise this afternoon when we received word that our local public school system will be faced with a budget cut in the millions of daughters next year. Of course, their thought is to elimintate most of the teachers in the Gifted program teachers and assign those services to "regular teachers." Given the system's track record for (not) providing training for these regular teachers in gifted education, I'm assuming this really means there will be no "services." When will they ever get that we need to educate the best and the brightest to their full potential?

Theory: it's a catch 22. They expect "gifted" kids and their parents to be the most resourceful and creative (least likely to suffer from budget cuts affecting lost services). Meanwhile, if rumor serves me correctly, the school system budget is set up so that there is no incentive for advanced acceleration a cash funding penalty for failed attempts at grade skipping. Therefore the simplest and cheapest, most practical solution- grade skipping and subject acceleration needlessly become artificially inflated high stakes decisions on behalf of the school side.
I don't know. I just don't know. //shakes.head/tsk.tsk//