This has been a problem for years and it's troubling that it seems to be getting worse.

I am by no means a genius, but in school I was beyond bored. I can't recall being challenged in the slightest during the 12 years I was in school. There was no incentive to excel, and no reward for doing well. My school system was simply not equipped to teach bright students at a pace that would keep them interested.

Keven:

You're a jerk, bro. This is without question the dumbest post you've ever written.

I am about as uninterested as it is possible to be in the special pleading of upper-income parents for their "genuius" children. They can all drive off an extraordinarily scenic cliff. En masse, like lemmings. It would be a delight to watch, and I'm sure the TV rights would be worth something.

Truly intelligent children (and I was one) succeed *in spite* of the school system.

Bob

Of course NCLB doesn't work. It didn't work when it was rolled out in Texas while Bush was governor. It was a disaster there, and ramping it up nationwide wasn't going to fix a horrifically flawed approach. But conservatives dont' do research. Why do they hate the children?

While I agree with your comments on NCLB, I have some problems with the comments related to gifted children. As has been said, most gifted chidren tend to do well inspite of everything. In many instances--and I have seen this in my county--Fairfax VA--it is the parents who push the gifted and talented program to untold heights. My worry is with the vast majority of average, white, middle income kids. We have umpteen programs for the disadvantaged, the gifted, the less than bright, etc. but the average kid is left to fend for themselves. My family are a bunch of teachers and they say the same thing. With the amount of time teachers are required to spend on both ends of the spectrum, the average, middle income kid is getting short shift..

Sure we should help the gifted, but I'm a tad skeptical of the bored=gifted formulation. Many subjects in school are "boring," but that isn't because they are taught at too low a level.

Not going to happen. Gifted individuals only become dissidents; and the Church has no interest in "new technologies and new industries in a knowledge-based economy".

Smart people are bad! It is an enourmous benefit to America to hold kids back in a state of mediocrity that will prevent them from questioning god or their government. Know who believes in evolution, human rights, responsible government and a round earth? Smart people.

We don't need smart people. We just need good 'murkan shoppers and service industry people to keep the wealthy entertained and convenienced and clean.

In response to rmck1:

What is lacking now... and has long been missing from any competent national discourse on education, is the intention to address the needs of all students in the system. Such an approach would be characterized by a lack of polemics and partisan quackry. It would address the systemic flaws as well as the economic realities surrounding funding. That discourse has never happened! The closest we've come to begining it was in the fifties.

But I expect that you were walking to school through blinding blizzards back then...

Actually, California is a unique situation. California, more so than any other state, has been taken over by fundamentalists (educational fundamentalists). California policy makers have rejected problem solving in favor of rote memorization of math facts. The result is evident in their test scores. Smart children will figure out ways to solve problems when their problem solving skills are exercized. Many of the successful foreign education models utilize teaching very few problems per day but emphasizing the problem solving skills necessary to solve any problem. California emphasizes teaching many, many problems per day and memorizing answers--kinda like an autistic child who is an idiot savant in multiplication tables but can't do simple algebra.

The vast majority of kids could handle, and enjoy just as much, a far more challenging curriculum. As an example. Fourth and fifth grade kids could easily begin to grasp concepts in calculus and algebra, perhaps even earlier than that.

One story that sticks in my mind was from a professor of Biology at a California university that was asked to give a talk to some third graders at a plain jane elementary school. She was afraid the kids would be bored and the talk would go over their head.

She was shocked when the kids were fascinated and came up with a slew of insightful questions, some of which led her to areas she'd never previously considered. Many more, and much better questions than her learned undergrads.

We are wasting the most powerful, most adaptive brains on the planet. Instead, expose them to the most cutting edge ideas out there. Let them see what the forefront of knowledge and human experience looks like. Let them explore it like no adult ever could.

I think the comments here show the problem.

The reason you think all gifted children are upper-middle class is because those are the only group of kids who have the frigging resources to do well!

I taught poor kids one summer. And some of these kids were REALLY frigging bright--they grasped difficult concepts quickly and they had all kinds of clever and efficient shortcuts. They were gifted.

But it didn't matter. They had such lackluster schooling that they lacked the fundamentals of learning--they didn't know how to study and stay focused, they had no intellecutal stamina, and because their knowledge base was so limited they could not integrate new ideas into an existing framework of concepts and so they forgot what they'd learned.

In some ways, education is no different than sports. It doesn't matter if you're 6'8, if you haven't been coached and practiced hard at ballball, then the people who have--even if they're only 6' or 5'10--are going to kick your ass.

That's why you think only middle class and upper middle class kids are gifted. They're the only ones getting coached.

Okay, somewhat less sardonically:

My whole problem with this debate rests, first and foremost, with equating children to little potential economic units. There's something about this that so violates the spirit of childhood and the free development of individuals that I want to crack people across the mouth who argue otherwise.

Secondly, in case anyone hasn't already noticed -- we live in a grotesquely child-centric culture. Childhood is so glamorized and idealized, we all *really hate* adulthood so much, that our popular culture is all geared toward terminal immaturity.

The sort of parents who are worried about their li'l genius can go stick the kid in a private school that caters to the egos of parents who want an opportunity to succeed at stuff they failed at the first time around. There's a cottage industry geared towards this, especially if you live in a place like Manhattan -- where getting into the right *pre-kindergarten* can be the knife edge between suicide and greatness.

Public school doesn't exist to cater to powerful flakes who crave ego validation through the "accomplishments" of their goddamn six-year-olds. Tahe the pressure off these kids already! It's emotionally unheealthy and doesn't guarantee squat about the child's later development.

Bob

theorajones:

Very good points. I have no animus against bright kids in general.

I have a whopping load of animus against wealthy parents who try to turn the intelligence of their children into a goddamned commodity.

Bob

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand why this is a frightening trend.

If so, then why should we worry about failing to produce more rocket scientists???

People forget that IQ 130 is just as far from norm as IQ 70...

Bob (rmck1) should reread the post. It's not written by Kevin, but by me. And it makes quite clear that it's poor gifted kids, not affluent ones, who are suffering most.

have a whopping load of animus against wealthy parents who try to turn the intelligence of their children into a goddamned commodity.

It is obvious that you have no children of your own.

People who don't have children don't know shit about the education system, and should shut the fuck up because they look stupid when they talk.

rmck1:
I agree, for the most part, with your concerns. I too, think there is far too much presure on some kids. I need to say, however, that the economic basis for educational sucess and success in later endeavors is rooted in the interactions of the early development of a child. Long term studies of students (from Headstart)indicate that the quality of the interactions with very young children (0-3)are determinative of future success. A child from a professional parent will receive over 30 million more verbal interactions than a poor child by the age of 3. This difference in experience sets the course for verbal aquisition, problem solving... a whole host of life skills. We can't just throw up our hands and walk away. This needs to be addressed because of the waste to our country and the world.

Sorry for the lack of consistency Dennis is my "real" name. Squenix is my screen name. "Life is such a muddle..."

It has nothing to do with turning them into little economic units for me, but you can bet your little hiney that it does for corperate america. Kids are little back doors into mommy and daddy's bank account, and I hear much cruder metaphors from all levels of the commercial sector.

What school should be about is helping kids realize their full potential as humans, and that means opportunity to learn as much as they can as fast as they can in things that interest them, as well as giving them basic skills to let them survive in country that preys upon them mercilessly.

When I was in elementary school in the 70's, I got a speed reading course, a course in recognizing manipulative advertising, some basic budget balancing economics, etc. Kids don't get that today. They don't get squat today.

Kids don't need the pressure off of them. They need real pressure and real opportunity to find what they are good at, including writing, art, music, sports, etc. It has nothing to do with making them good workers, but has everything to do with making them complete people. The "golden years" approach to sheltering children does them no service at all - it leaves them totally unprepared for adult life.

Every kid should have an opportunity for focused or advanced study in something they like. Not just "gifted" kids. I knew a lot of sharp kids who never got considered "gifted", who could have really enjoyed the "advanced" classes I got access to.

Our educational system needs a total overhaul. And NCLB has made it all so much worse.

My child goes to one of the ten highest rated elementary schools in California. Amazingly many parents in the neigborhood still send their kids to private schools. Sometimes this is for religious reasons, but equally often it's because NCLB is very rigid and ignores the fact that children learn in diferent ways and at diferent paces. Private schools don't have the same curiculum restraints that public ones do. OTOH, I find it amazing that private schools don't have to submit to testing the way that public ones do. I suspect that if they did, some well-thought-of institutions wouldn't look quite so hot. But that's a topic for another day.

PO'ed Liberal:

People who make crude ad-hominem arguments based on assumptions about people they don't know should consider S'ing TFU just as a matter of general principle :)

Paul:

Oh it's true it's true; I essentially skimmed that post. I'm sure the good liberals who write for PA in Kevin's stead would aim their concerns at less wealthy children who are gifted, rather than the ones whose "needs" are being relentlessly "met" by overconcerned parents with an eye toward Ivy League acceptance 12 years too early.

My problems, however, remain unassuaged. I believe that intelligence is one of those qualities that will eventually out. What you and others are doing is conflating intelligence with what sociologist Pierre Bourdeaux calls cultural capital.

Bob

It's a fallacy that the least proficient students get all the resources. NCLB asks that the maximum number of children be proficient - that it to say children who cannot meet the arbitrary national standard are quietly cut loose. The effective block-granting of CA state special ed resources allows staffing to be shifted away from children with disabilities, into regular education reading programs.

Especially dumb post, Kevin.

The value added testing approach doesn't just make sense to measure progress for gifted students, it makes sense for *all* students. Lets say a teacher has 28 kids in a class. 5 are really smart, they *already* know how to do most of the stuff that's on the test. 5 are doing schoolwork at a much lower level, 2 grades behind . . . its going to take a *ton* of work to even get them anywhere near grade level. If all a test does is measure whether or not a student is at grade level, then teachers are encouraged to do triage rather than teaching. If Fred is reading at 4.9 grade level and Mary is reading at 3.7 and the goal is to get them both to 5.0, the obvious solution is to bust your ass teaching Mary and just skate by with Fred.

On the other hand, if teachers are judged by how much their students improve over what they knew at the beginning of the year (as measured say by the previous years end of grade tests) then they get full accountablity for what their students learned in a class. A 5th grade teacher whose students started the year reading at a 3d grade level and ended the year reading above a 4th grade level did a years worth of work. Test scores should reflect that, and should not reward or penalize teachers based on the ability of their students at the start of the school year.

As far as "gifted" students and resources, simply as a matter of political economy, schools can't ignore meeting the needs of bright students with demanding, resource-enriched parents. That doesn't mean they need their every whim catered to, but if Principals can't offer a legitimately challenging curriculum then they will abandon the public schools and bad-mouth them, work to channel resources away from public schools, etc. If schools give up on kids, then we should expect that parents will give up on schools. As a matter of justice, this does hurt students who are bright but do not have the parental resources to give them access to a good education.

Does this mean that schools need to devote an enormous amount of resources to gifted students? No. But in my opinion, it does mean that schools should have a system of evaluation that doesn't include perverse incentives for teachers to ignore gifted students.

Down home, there are plenty of openings for "poor gifted kids" at Hardees and McDonalds. The NCLB has been great for filling Courtesy Clerks at Wal-Mart. Don't need no "uppity types" down here. Like we need another Tennesse Williams or Faulkner around these parts.

Church learnin' is jus' fine.

And, hell, we buy all our computers from Asia anyway.

I'm waiting for the Right to demand New Divine Math. Students will be instructed to pour a bunch of numbers into a blender, pray to God for the right answer and pour out the results onto lined paper. Muslims, atheists and Jews will flunk and the Almighty will see to it true believers get passed onto the next grade.

Mysticdog:

You raise some interesting points. Yes, it's a jungle out there, and commercial interests stand ready (more than ready) to prey upon children from the moment they start realizing they have autonomous desires.

And, yes, one of the goals of education should be to make kids aware of this and stimulate their critical thinking abilities so they can practice some discernment early on ...

Here's the thing: Without the "golden years" approach to childhood (already thoroughly integrated into popular culture), a kid doesn't have the opportunity to even know what s/he is good at, outside of the context of pleasing mommy and daddy. Undue pressure on kids to excel at very early ages is something dictated by adult concerns about the economy; it isn't organic to the child, or to their relationship to that child. It's an external boogie man.

Kids need *less* boogie men, not more. They need unconditional positive regard and acceptance for who they are, coupled with reasonable opportunities to *discover* what it at which they excel and what they like doing. That requires space and patience, and -- yes -- insulating the kids in a nurturing environment cut off from heavy expectations, at least until their tweens.

Intelligence is an innate quality that can only be cultivated, not properly-speaking taught. When you try to teach intelligence, you mistake cultural capital for thinking skills.

Bob

William:

Very well-considered post which answers well some of my carping, sardonic cynicism about "gifted" parents and public schools.

Certainly there has to be *some* attention to gifted kids, else if their parents have the resources, they'll just pull them out of public school and help perpetuate a self-justifying argument that public schools are failing their mission.

And yes -- absolutely -- rate teachers on relative performance over the year, not on arbitrary centralized goals.

Bob

This whole discussion is based on bogus numbers.

So "the percentage of California students scoring in the 'advanced' math range has declined by as much as half between second and fifth grade," right?

"As much as" is one of those weasel phrases that can mean "not at all, except for one or two individual schools whose numbers I can extrapolate from to make my point."

Statewide spring 2002 results, the percentage of students scoring "advanced" in grades 2-5: 16%, 12%, 13%, 7%.

That would have been the last year pre-NCLB (which was signed into law in Jan 2002, but didn't have any real effects until the 2002-03 school year).

Statewide spring 2005 results (click "View Report"): 28%, 24%, 26%, 19%.

Hardly a decline of "as much as half."

I am about as uninterested as it is possible to be in the special pleading of upper-income parents for their "genuius" children.

Gifted children are not all upper income. Plenty are from middle and lower incomes. And if not motivated and given access to programs appropriate to their abilities, they are particularly likely be disruptive influences that cause trouble for the classes they are in and inhibit learning.

Further, Kevin's post particularly points this out: "Indeed, there is mounting evidence from other states that high-potential but low-income kids are the ones who are really being left behind." So, refering to the post as "special special pleading of upper-income parents for their "genuius" children" is grossly inaccurate.

Not meeting the academic needs of gifted children -- particularly the low- to middle-income gifted children whose parents are least likely to be able to resort to pulling their children out of public schools that don't meet their needs -- hurts the education of all students.

An anecdote--

My 8th grader attends a magnet program for gifted
kids. Kids in the magnet program, who are mostly
middle class, make up about 1/3 of the population
of the middle school which is otherwise low SES.

This year, the annual supply budgets of
the science teachers in the magnet program
were cut from $1000 to $200. This works
out to less than $2 per student for the entire
school year. The money was spend on remedial
programs for the regular students to try to bring
up their test scored for NCLB.

The really irritating thing was that the
principal would not allow the teachers to
tell the parents this or ask for donations
because he didn't want parents to think that
the school wasn't adequately funded. He'd
prefer to have the students waste a year of
science class.

Sure we should help the gifted, but I'm a tad skeptical of the bored=gifted formulation.

The suggested relationship is not "bored=gifted" it is "gifted --> likely to be bored if instruction is focussed on bringing up the bottom of the distribution and resources diverted from meeting the needs at the top".

cmdicely:

That wasn't Kevin's post, that was Paul's. I was, uhm, ranting a little bit, but had you followed the thread downward, you would have seen that I acknowledged these criticisms earlier.

There is a very serious problem with NCLB -- I acknowledge all of these criticisms and support them. I feel really bad for motherbear's 8th grader, sitting in a de-funded science class because NCLB required remedial education.

My problem is a tad larger issue, and it's primarily philosophical (with pedagogical implications):

What exactly defines "intelligence"? Can it, properly speaking, be tested in such a way that accounts for immersion in certains kind of information that the culture has declared to be valuable?

Bob

I am amused by all of the people blaming those on the right for the failure in education. The right never insisted on the following:

1. An end to academic tracking.
2. The main streaming of learning disable children.
3. Forced busing and forced diversity.
4. Social promotion.
5. Bilingual education.
6. Grouping my age instead of ability.

If you want to find the group that has abandoned the children who actually want to learn, the "progressive" educators just needs to look in the mirror.

Remember, the biggest problem that most "progessive" educators have with the laughably low standards in NCLB is that too many inner city and poor schools cannot even manage to achieve the standards. This failure just demonstrates that most inner city and majority-minority school systems have been handing out grades and diplomas to kids who are functionally illiterate for decades.

superdestroyer:

Well, judging by the whopping amount of typographical errors in your post, all I'd have to say to your argument is, uhh, Q. E. D. :)

Thank gods I was raised in a liberal household where my parents knew how to spell and conjugate verbs ...

Bob

Superdestroyer:

Wow, you went there didn't you? Its not the fault of the right that poor "inner-city" students are doing poorly today. Surely Jim Crow had absolutely nothing to do with the situation we are in today. Nope, the fault lies with progressives for ending segregation and not immediately holding disadvantaged students to the same standards as students whose families had for generations recieved preferential educational treatment.

Look, we can play a blame game or we can look for solutions. Measuring academic progress by evaluating students by how much they learn during an academic year isn't a right-wing or left-wing proposal. Its just good common sense. To the extent that folks are blaming "the right", they are criticizing specific aspects of a specific law that was the brainchild of George Bush. And by pointing out both a problem and a solution, we aren't blaming every educational evil that exits on NCLB and conservatives. There's no reason a conservative should be opposed to value-added testing (unless they truely wanted to institute a stupid rubric of evaluating public schools).

The biggest problem any educator has with the way NCLB is set up is that it makes no logical sense that we should compare this year's 4th graders to last year's 4th graders or the 4th graders of 5 years ago. We should compare the scores of this years 4th graders to their scores from the 3rd grade tests and find out how much they actually learned over the year.

Quality education doesn't require segregation. . . but it does require that teachers are evaluated by how much they actually teach their students.

Bob,
Quite an interesting segue you made from entertaining rant to thoughtful nuance.

You have identified (or acknowledged) two problems with our treatment of gifted students. As you pointed out, a child of upper-middle-class, pushy parents is likely to end up with that "gifted" designation because of what you call "immersion in certain kinds of information that the culture has declared to be valuable." These kids aren't necessarily smart, but are manufactured little automatons who can robotically give the correct answers come test time.

Then there are the truly smart kids who are being screwed over in our education system. Who screws them over? Not only the underfunded, NCLB-obsessed schools, but the pushy parents who find ways to get their kids in gifted classes while the poorer and smarter kids are, uh, "left behind."

Where I live, in Palm Beach County, everyone knows that if you have the money, you can hire child psychologists to test your kid multiple times (if necessary) to achieve that "gifted" label. Not only are these kids brought up in more stimulating environments, but their parents can buy them a spot in a gifted class. The children of poorer parents not only don't have the means to buy a "gifted" label for their kids, but aren't even aware that they can do it.

I grew up poor and very smart, but my intelligence was ignored by teachers and administrators after fifth grade. Now that I'm comfortably middle class and have a very smart son, I struggle not to push him too hard, the way those NYC parents do who practically commit suicide if Junior doesn't get in the preschool that's on the Ivy League track. We had the school psychologist administer the "gifted" test (we didn't hire a mercenary, as so many in our county do), and my son just barely missed the "gifted" designation.

In some ways it's hard to let go -- to allow him to be himself and not to push him harder. But he's in fourth grade, and I'll be damned if we're going to push him into being an overscheduled Little Achiever at age 9. This position is heresy in upper middle class social circles, but my wife and I both come from working-class origins and we're immune to some of the middle-class cultural baggage. At least, I hope we are.

We saw the same impact here in Virginia with state-enforced standards of learning. Gifted programs were cut and the gifted kids were used as unpaid teacher's aids and tutors to help pull the bottom scorers up...thekeez

You have identified (or acknowledged) two problems with our treatment of gifted students. As you pointed out, a child of upper-middle-class, pushy parents is likely to end up with that "gifted" designation because of what you call "immersion in certain kinds of information that the culture has declared to be valuable."

I ended up with it because I was bored and disruptive in my first few years in school, and referred for psychological testing by the school because they suspected I had a learning disability.

This is by way of suggesting that I think that it would be substantially better if equal information and proactive identification were provided to identify students rather than relying on either testing bought by the parents or reactive testing proposed by thes school district.

If there are better ways of evaluating students, incorporate them into the law, already. I didn't see anything in NCLB that carved it in stone. Revise it in Congress. Where is Ted Kennedy, who supported the current version?

Where I live, in Palm Beach County, everyone knows that if you have the money, you can hire child psychologists to test your kid multiple times (if necessary) to achieve that "gifted" label. Not only are these kids brought up in more stimulating environments, but their parents can buy them a spot in a gifted class.

Ironically enough, my husband reports that where he grew up, parents of gifted kids got them tested for disabilities, because there was no funding for the gifted, but only extra attention for the learning disabled. So all the gifted students were also learning disabled.

Re: kids as economic units and schools for making kids more employable
What school should be about is helping kids realize their full potential as humans

If you read the writings of the founding fathers who supported free public schooling, they believed the purpose of public schooling wasn't to make kids employable, but to enable kids to become participating citizens in a democracy, able to evaluate candidate claims and/or run for public office themselves.
Notice that civics education has entirely gone by the wayside in NCLB?

Tbrosz:

The issue isn't evaluating students, the issue is evaluating schools. NCLB did in fact carve in stone as to the way the scores of students are used to evaluate schools. Yes, this *can* be changed, but it isn't a matter of blaming Teddy Kennedy or George Bush. Perhaps neither of them considered value-added testing when NCLB was being debated. What matters, if you think that value-added testing would be a good change to accountablity standards under NCLB, is that the law be changed.

Lis Reba:

Very good points. Public education, at the end of the day, is about cultivating the virtues that create good citizenship -- with the immediate corrolary that it requires the education of the whole person, seen as an irreducible unit and not an agglomeration of "useful" or "unuseful" qualities. Education is an ends in itself because *children* are ends in themselves.

Now let's all have a moment of silence (seriously) to honor Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative.

Holdie:

I couldn't agree more. The reason I came out of the box swingin' on this has been painfully etched into my psyche as a child. My mother, gods rest her tortured alcoholic soul, was convinced that I, her first born, was some kind of genius -- which she spent every opportunity trying to convince neighbors and school officials.

This set me off on a pattern of rebellion against all standardized testing and all school authority that I didn't manage to understand and transcend until late adulthood.

Fooey on foisted expectations from neurotic, empty parents. Sorry Mom -- if you didn't drink yourself to death by the time I hit puberty, perhaps we could've discussed this.

Bob

William,

If a great education does not require segregation then why do all of the leaders of the Democrat Party send their children to virtually all white private schools like St Albans or Sidwell Friends instead of public school? Do they know something that they just do not want to say to most Americans? Why do so many leaders ask Americans to send their children to schools where they would never send their own children?

superdestroyer:

"All" of the leaders?

Howard Dean sent his kids to public school, dingus.

Among, you know, countless other examples. You'd like to poll Dems vs Repubs in Congress on whose kids go where, something tells me you'll be rether humiliatingly defeated in this argument :)

Bob

Lis Reba,

You are correct that the underlying principle of free public education was the "social integration and social unity" of the populace.

At the time of our Founding, most schools were private and many of them were academies which had obtained land grants from the local governments.

Free public schooling began in Holland in 1806 and was followed by Prussia in 1819. The first experiment in this country was in Boston in 1818. It was from this beginning that the Massachusetts State Senator Horace Mann fought for the Prussian system to be developed in the US. It really did not start to take off until the 1830s. The Unitarians were very involved in this creation and finally the Calvinists were won over to join in the development. Horace Mann believed that free public education could make obsolete nine tenths of the penal code.
Could be wrong, but I believe that free public school systems did not develop in some states, such as Mississippi until 1870 or even later.

I know that there are posters with far more knowledge on this subject than I, but I was intrigued by the religious groups who were not only interested in the free schools for social integration, but some who were also worried about the immigration of Roman Catholics demanding the community pay for their schools as well. They thought if the government was in charge of the community based free schools they would not pay for any outside religious school.

Superdestroyer:

Do you think that segregation is required to provide quality education? Your rhetorical question seems to imply that, as did your laundry list of horrors inflicted upon public schools by progressives.

I can't explain why anyone chooses public or private schools for their children, and quite frankly its rather irrelevant to the debate at hand. Unless of course, you think the purpose of NCLB should be to destroy the public school system and promote the transfer of tax dollars to unaccountable private schools. If *that* was your point of view, then changing NCLB to more accurately measure the amount of teaching in classrooms would indeed be a bad thing, not a good thing.

The rest of us are talking about ways that we can make our public schools better.

I teach 1st grade at a school that serves a 95% military population; we're located on the grounds of Fairchild AFB, and this is an issue that we've been struggling with for more than a year now.

The district decided a decade ago to eliminate the two Highly Capable teachers that we had in favor of a more inclusive approach. The theory was good, that all kids deserve the sort of stimulation that the gifted kids were getting, but the practice was awfully hard on those hi-cap kids. They used to have an hour or more a week that they could count on to be their time, with their peers, to explore topics that were meaningful to them. Losing that was a shame.

Now we have programs that are open to all interested kids. I teach the enrichment math class for 1st graders, and last year I had 25 out of 100 kids come to be with me. Great for all of them, but I know that if I could have had the 10 highest on their own we could have done some truly amazing things.

This year I hit the jackpot where I have 4 kids who are reading above grade level. Well above grade level--our next study book after the break is going to be the junior novelization of The Three Musketeers, and then there's a biography of MLK Jr. that they self-selected. Super kids, every single one of them....

....but if I don't get the bottom quartile to perform on the DRA assessment, it will reflect poorly on me, my school, and my district.

That's why I think the person trumpeting Value Added Assessment has a strong point. I could ignore my upper group all year long and they'd still pass the end-of-year reading examination. I know this because they already did, in September. Those kids have already mastered my 1st grade curriculum. The other kids need my help more, because they are the struggling readers, and the research now shows that if you're a struggling reader at the end of 1st or 2nd grade there's a high likelihood that you're going to be a struggling reader 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the road. Ethically, who is my greater responsibility to?

I apologize for the length. Just some thoughts.

--Ryan--

I teach 1st grade at a school that serves a 95% military population; we're located on the grounds of Fairchild AFB, and this is an issue that we've been struggling with for more than a year now.

The district decided a decade ago to eliminate the two Highly Capable teachers that we had in favor of a more inclusive approach. The theory was good, that all kids deserve the sort of stimulation that the gifted kids were getting, but the practice was awfully hard on those hi-cap kids. They used to have an hour or more a week that they could count on to be their time, with their peers, to explore topics that were meaningful to them. Losing that was a shame.

Now we have programs that are open to all interested kids. I teach the enrichment math class for 1st graders, and last year I had 25 out of 100 kids come to be with me. Great for all of them, but I know that if I could have had the 10 highest on their own we could have done some truly amazing things.

This year I hit the jackpot where I have 4 kids who are reading above grade level. Well above grade level--our next study book after the break is going to be the junior novelization of The Three Musketeers, and then there's a biography of MLK Jr. that they self-selected. Super kids, every single one of them....

....but if I don't get the bottom quartile to perform on the DRA assessment, it will reflect poorly on me, my school, and my district.

That's why I think the person trumpeting Value Added Assessment has a strong point. I could ignore my upper group all year long and they'd still pass the end-of-year reading examination. I know this because they already did, in September. Those kids have already mastered my 1st grade curriculum. The other kids need my help more, because they are the struggling readers, and the research now shows that if you're a struggling reader at the end of 1st or 2nd grade there's a high likelihood that you're going to be a struggling reader 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the road. Ethically, who is my greater responsibility to?

I apologize for the length. Just some thoughts.

--Ryan--

I teach 1st grade at a school that serves a 95% military population; we're located on the grounds of Fairchild AFB, and this is an issue that we've been struggling with for more than a year now.

The district decided a decade ago to eliminate the two Highly Capable teachers that we had in favor of a more inclusive approach. The theory was good, that all kids deserve the sort of stimulation that the gifted kids were getting, but the practice was awfully hard on those hi-cap kids. They used to have an hour or more a week that they could count on to be their time, with their peers, to explore topics that were meaningful to them. Losing that was a shame.

Now we have programs that are open to all interested kids. I teach the enrichment math class for 1st graders, and last year I had 25 out of 100 kids come to be with me. Great for all of them, but I know that if I could have had the 10 highest on their own we could have done some truly amazing things.

This year I hit the jackpot where I have 4 kids who are reading above grade level. Well above grade level--our next study book after the break is going to be the junior novelization of The Three Musketeers, and then there's a biography of MLK Jr. that they self-selected. Super kids, every single one of them....

....but if I don't get the bottom quartile to perform on the DRA assessment, it will reflect poorly on me, my school, and my district.

That's why I think the person trumpeting Value Added Assessment has a strong point. I could ignore my upper group all year long and they'd still pass the end-of-year reading examination. I know this because they already did, in September. Those kids have already mastered my 1st grade curriculum. The other kids need my help more, because they are the struggling readers, and the research now shows that if you're a struggling reader at the end of 1st or 2nd grade there's a high likelihood that you're going to be a struggling reader 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the road. Ethically, who is my greater responsibility to?

I apologize for the length. Just some thoughts.

--Ryan--

Superdestroyer - One thing to realize about Washington DC is that in order to gain self-rule (not have city government run by Congress), the residents of DC made a very bad deal. They agreed not to tax the commuters who worked in DC but lived in MD or VA. Most other states (Mass. and NY do) with large commuter populations do tax non-resident's income. This means city services are perpetually money-starved (and there is no magnet/exam high school like most large cities have, and the pols you complain about would likely send there kids to.)

So while DC may seem like the poster child for bad city government, they are doing it with one arm tied behind their back.

Another reason people in the public eye tend to send their kids to private schools is that private schools exert some control over the teachers and student bodies to make sure that the kids have some privacy and don't have teachers and classmates running to the press to do interviews. (Like happened to Amy Carter.)

One ugly little secret is that it is going to cost a whole lot more...double? triple?? to educate the entrenched poor than the general population.

People stuck in poverty are stuck there because their families are broken. The familial support structure that any kid needs has been disrupted by by illness, mental illness, drugs, abuse, crime, self-loathing, and the simple grind of proverty itself. Normal school culture is not going to make much a dent. There will always be some unusually attractive and gifted kids that escape, but the bulk will remain stuck until we provide a non-chaotic environment in which the kid can be given remedial help and the family can be supported in the kid's educational process.

Middle class taxpayers won't stand for it.

Ryan,

Ethically, who is my greater responsibility to?

My mother recently retired after 40+ years of teaching in public schools--the last 20 years in 3rd grade. She would state that you have the same ethical responsibility to every child. Not that that is easy, granted.

NotThatMo,

I agree that DC got a bad break on the home rule front (DC Last Colony bumpersticker is still on MY car). But... DC does have at least two high-schools that are 'magnet'-admission only schools. Banneker SHS and School Without Walls SHS.

Unfortunately, DC also has one of the most bi-modal distributions of wealth in the nation, and the public school system is mostly what exists after all the wealthy folks have departed for private schools and middle-class, highly educated folks have left for Fairfax, Va. As a result, the demographics of the public school system are skewed to result in 'failing schools'.

Now to get back on-topic, the NCLB is designed to label all public schools as 'failing schools'. That is the goal. The statistical improvements needed to avoid being labeled as 'failure to achieve' the standards will become impossible to achieve by 2009. The result of marking all public schools as 'failures' will be to drive all remaining, middle-class taxpayers towards private or sectarian schools. The de-funding of public schools will accelerate as the middle-class leaves public schools behind.

We as a country ought to be able to take care of all children and really leave no child behind what they are able to absorb.

Take a look at the nation's report card, the NAEP, especially the Trial Urban schools analysis.
2003 is here: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/

2005 is here:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

Value-added testing is certainly fairer than the current travesty, but it's not the only change that's NCLB needs. Testing should occur less often but be more standardized across states than they are right now. The standards also need to change so that diverse schools are not penalized by having to jump through more hoops that lily white schools in red zones.

Being a teacher in a Junior College in California I must say that the students base knowledge has dropped every year for the last 10 or so years. The medical classes, Nursing and Fire Science classes, which normally would have 10-15% failure rates, are now in the 50-60% range. The books, classes and teachers are all the same, only the students have changed. And you have to say, you don't want stupid people trying to save your life! Why is this? 1. Economy is too good. You do not see the 25-30 year old coming back to college to further their education to get a better job, 2. kids coming out of high school don't have the basics down. I mean writing and math are at 5-6 grade levels. 3.Flat out, they don't care.

I also don't buy into the, California has a really low rate because of the conservatives. You can't compare CA schools that have imigration from Asia and Mexico that don't speak English as a first language compaired to Nebraska or Idaho. If the parents can send their kids to private schools and there scores don't count, yes the total recorded scores will be lower. And don't forget the poverty and drop out rates that hurt everyone. If you want to see some scary numbers, just look at Oakland, CA High School drop out rate---over 50%!

It didn't start with this Bush but he sure is helping it get worse. No Child Left Behind, right, sorry Johnny you failed 12th grade, read at a 5th grade level and can't tie your shoes, here's your diploma have a nice time with your friends.

cmdicely:

Glastris' post made the assertion that students were dropping out because they were gifted. I'm skeptical. Some bright students may drop out to start college early, or to start work, but if you are getting As in all your courses, that just means you have more time to do sports or extracurriculars. If you are a younger student, it means you have more time to play or to read recreationally.

Goodkin made the paradoxical argument that "the percentage of California students scoring in the 'advanced' math range has declined by as much as half between second and fifth grade." This may be from lack of resources for gifted students, but it could also be accounted for by alot of other factors.

Skipping grades and early graduation has always been a simple solution for the gifted. I was a gifted student myself. I am sick of people saying that they didn't do well in school because they were "bored." If it was so easy then they should have got straight As, graduated early, and matriculated at Harvard.

Something tells me we ain't going to be winning any more space races. It's a good thing that math and science are "theoretical" and not really necessary anymore, isn't it? Otherwise we would be screwed...

Oh wait...

WaPo Critic: . . . the NCLB is designed to label all public schools as 'failing schools'. That is the goal. The statistical improvements needed to avoid being labeled as 'failure to achieve' the standards will become impossible to achieve by 2009. The result of marking all public schools as 'failures' will be to drive all remaining, middle-class taxpayers towards private or sectarian schools. The de-funding of public schools will accelerate as the middle-class leaves public schools behind.

Thank you for that -- best summary of NCLB I've seen.

Global Citizen, your are correct, but I don't believe winning space races is the goal of the right. NCLB is the path to victory in the class war, at least on the educational front. Destroy (privatize) all public services, not just public assistance and health services, but also K-12 education and transportation. That's the ticket.

NotThatMo

You cannot argue that funding is the issue when the DC public schools are funded at a higher level that the public schools of any other state. All a commuter tax would do is take money away from schools in the surrounding communities. And you especially cannot argue that funding is the issue after seeing that DC still has minority set aside contracting and seeing the corruption of the teachers union.

rmck1

Of course Howard Dean’s children would attend the all white schools in Vermont. But look at John Edwards. His children attended a non-diverse magnet school while they lived in North Carolina but attended private schools while living in DC. But how can progressives claim to want to help the bright children while changing the admission process at Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax to emphasis race and ethnicity over academic performance? How can liberals claim to champion the students who want to learn while denying admission to Asian-American students to magnet programs in Montgomery county due to their ethnicity?

William,

The question I always bring up when any educational program is proposed is to ask the question: Does the proposal make the school more like the schools where the elite send their children or less like those schools. For years, progressive educators have make many proposals that have made the experience of the average public school student less similar to the private school students and has de-emphasized academic learning.

SuperAnnoyer:

> Of course Howard Deans children would attend the all white schools
> in Vermont. But look at John Edwards. His children attended a non-
> diverse magnet school while they lived in North Carolina but
> attended private schools while living in DC. But how can progressives
> claim to want to help the bright children while changing the
> admission process at Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax
> to emphasis race and ethnicity over academic performance? How
> can liberals claim to champion the students who want to learn
> while denying admission to Asian-American students to magnet
> programs in Montgomery county due to their ethnicity?

Listen, you odious racist troll, I take *nothing* you say at
face value. I have no reason to believe that the TJHS admission
process was changed to "emphasis [sic] race and ethnicity over
academic performance." Nor do I have reason to take you at
your word that magnet schools in Montgomery County denied
admission to Asian-American students "due to their ethnicity"

If you want me (or anybody else who reads this blog) to
believe you, you're going to have to provide citations.

Secondly, don't hold me accountable for John Edwards. I have
no clue of why he does what he does and I'm not very interested.

Third, how *dare* you libel Howard Dean. How do *you* know
why his kids went to public school? You know absolutely
nothing; your racial attack oozes with slime, especially
on a guy who specifically chose black roommates at Yale.

Fourth -- meet my challenge. How many GOPers in either house
of Congress send their kids to public school? Without this
data to set a baseline, your accusation against "progressives"
for allegedly not supporting public schools is meaningless.

You wouldn't dare begin to answer me, of course.

Bob

What seems overlooked here is the teacher. In a class with a good teacher, all students learn. A poor teacher is a horror. A real problem in US education is teacher quality.

Psych1--I would tend to agree, and this is coming from a good NEA member.

That said, how to we create better teachers? How do we put a mechanism in place to get rid of bad teachers while at the same time giving security to the good ones?

I was kind of hoping that Arnold's ballot measure about raising the probationary period for teachers to 5 years would pass. I'm not sure what the effect would have been, but it would have been interesting to see.

--Ryan--

Superdestroyer:

"The question I always bring up when any educational program is proposed is to ask the question: Does the proposal make the school more like the schools where the elite send their children or less like those schools."

Proposals that have to do with tweaking federally-mandated testing have *nothing* to do with private schools. Private schools don't have any federally-mandated testing at all. Your question is a red herring and irrelevant to the current discussion.

its a cool..

rmck1, Sorry to disappoint you but it took me ten minutes to find these links. Now, I would like for you to find five ways in which progressive educators actually encourage academic achievement. My guess is that you will just resort to more personal attacks and insults.

As far as Thomas Jefferson High School goes you could have looked it up in the Washington Post

In a 10 to 1 vote with one abstention, the board changed the rigid admissions formula for the highly selective school so that hundreds more applicants each year will make the first cut. Then, as they decide who will make the final cut, admissions officers will consider teacher recommendations, applicants' essays and other factors, including race, ethnicity, poverty and cultural experiences.

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10740-2004Sep10.html

It is really hard for "progressive" educators to claim that NCLB is hurting academic performance at the same time that they want race and ethnicity to be more important than academic performance.

Also see http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/getcase/4th/case/982503P&exact=1

Where it was determined that the Montgomery County Board of Education may deny a student's request to transfer to a magnet school because of his race.

You can also look at the arguments in the Gratz decision, the ruling the Grutter decision, and state rules such as the Top Ten Percent rule to see that progressive educators may be for many things but rewarding academic achievement is jut not one of them. I guess that being "critical thinkers" and "progressive citizens" is actually more important that any amount of academic learning.

You can look up where Congress sends their children at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/BG1377.cfm

Democrats do send their children to public schools at a slightly higher rate than Republicans but still for the party that gets 100% of the donations from the teachers unions, I would expect a 100% use of public schools.

I would not put my money on Howard Dean since (according to Wikipedia) he attend St. George's School, and his daughter is attending Yale. Not exactly the best endorsers for the ability of anyone to have high academic achievement in diverse public schools (especially if those public school students are never, ever tested on what they are suppose to be learning)

William,

My guess is that those children in the elite, college prep get much more "drill and kill" and spend a greater percentage of their time preparing for tests than the students in the bad urban school districts that all of the anti-NCLB are bemoaning. However, those students are the elite, private schools are prepping for AP tests, IB, SAT II, etc tests.

SuperChief:

You don't debate in good faith. Howard Dean sent his kids to public schools. You didn't address that point. His prep school, his kid's college, have nothing whatsoever to do with your initial contention. You distort -- I deride :)

You claim that Congressional Dems send their kids to public schools "at a higher rate" than Repubs -- but you provide no evidence.

Okay then, have it your way. I'll simply choose not to believe you :)

Go read the SCOTUS Michigan Affirmative Action decision, dingus.

If you have a problem with diversity, then I have a problem with you. I don't enjoy even talking to racists, let alone debating with them.

Bob

Bob,

I see that you could not come up with any "progressive" education initiaitves that were designed to improve academic achievement for gifted students. I guess that leaves you with the diversity/inclusion/social engineering initiatives that most progressives support. I guess that the progressive submitting amicus briefs to the Supreme Court saying that separate and unequal admissions standards for blacks and hispanics is just not legal but good public policy does not leave any time for actually support academic achievement.

Since you are in to references, I would like you to supply a reference as to the school that Anna Dean attended. I could not find any reference that she attended a public school. Maybe it is in Dean's sealed papers somewhere.

I take it you come from the leftist activist school of polemics where your main goal it to nitpick and name call the other guy instead of arguing facts/policies/outcomes. I would love for some of your type to name the minority-majority school that any white member of the Democrat National Committee sends his children to.

PS. I did supply you with a reference on public and private school partiication of Congress. The Hertigage Institute reports that about 50% of Democrats send their children to private school. This is, of course, much higher that the 10% private school attendence rate for all children.