The New Orthodoxy: All Students Are “Gifted” …

… but we can’t use that word any more. As the Washington Post points out, “‘Gifted’ Label Takes a Vacation in Diversity Quest.”

Instead of selecting a few hundred students for traditional school magnets, [Montgomery County, Maryland] officials opened magnet programs at three middle schools to everyone.

In doing so, county educators — like officials of a growing number of school systems across the country — are trying to find a more diverse pool of students. They are experimenting with new ways to reach out to students who might have special abilities but may not have been recognized through traditional screening methods.

Those “traditional screening methods,” of course, are tests that do a pretty good job of identifying exceptional math or verbal abilities.

“In the future,” said Martin Creel, director of Montgomery County’s “enriched instruction division,”

where we want to move is where it’s not so much identifying children as gifted and talented so much as getting them the services they need to reach their potential.

I’m not sure what, if anything, this says, but it seems to reflect a growing resistance to “labeling” some children as gifted. Thus, according to Carol Horn, coordinator of gifted programs in Fairfax County, Virginia,

We’ve changed from labeling children to labeling services…. It’s not whether you’re gifted, it’s what’s appropriate for you.

This approach to gifted education is, quite clearly, not really an attempt to improve it; it’s an attempt to deal with, or disguise, what could be called a “gifted gap.”

Educators hope that the new approach will help them address why black and Hispanic students continue to lag behind white and Asian counterparts in achievement and why so few take advanced classes or are admitted into accelerated programs.

….

During the spring, Montgomery officials came under fire from a group of black parents who were concerned about the low numbers of blacks and Hispanics who were being admitted to middle school magnet programs. They were also alarmed by how few of them were being labeled “gifted and talented” by the school system’s second-grade screening process, which uses a variety of yardsticks. School officials said they were working diligently to narrow the gap between students but acknowledged that they have more work to do.

But it is just this concern — that too many students are being shut out of elite programs for reasons difficult to pin down — that is fueling the school system’s push for better access to special programs and less emphasis on labels to determine into which reading or math group a student is placed.

But the reason students are “shut out of” gifted programs is not at all “difficult to pin down.” It’s the same reason so many applicants are “shut out of” Harvard, Stanford, et. al; they don’t score high enough on admission tests. Now, the reasons for that may be difficult to pin down, but opening up gifted programs to students “who might have special abilities but may not have been recognized through traditional screening methods” would not seem the way to provide answers. [Emphasis added. And “may not”? Of course not, or they would have been admitted.]

Some of you old timers here (by longevity as readers, not age) may recall that Jessie, my daughter and original co-blogger (until she got too busy at Bryn Mawr and then Caltech) attended Fairfax County schools through the sixth grade, and she was generally served well by its gifted and talented program. (Indeed, it was Jessie who called my attention to this article.) Reading this article reminded me of one of her experiences there:

Jessie had just moved from her excellent elementary school to a more problematical middle school. At the Parents’ Night at the beginning of the school year the Principal expressed his great pride in a new grading system that had been introduced the preceding year. “As a result,” he stated with beeming satisfaction, “the grades of all of our students have improved dramatically.” He acknowledged, however, that “there is still work to be done, because their scores on standardized tests have not improved.”

UPDATE

See Kimberly Swygert’s similar discussion of meaningless awards on Number 2 Pencil.

Say What? (13)

  1. Den February 23, 2006 at 12:34 pm | | Reply

    John

    In the foregoing comment, can you define what you mean by “…more problematical middle school…”?

    Was the racial composition different from her elementary school?

    Did this have anything to do, in your opinion, with the “problematical” nature of the middle school?

  2. joannejacobs.com February 23, 2006 at 1:53 pm | | Reply

    Everyone’s gifted

    Over at Discriminations, John Rosenberg is dubious about the attempt to close the “gifted gap” by opening “gifted and talented” programs to minority students who “might have special talents” (or might not) but don’t qualify based on test scores. John’s…

  3. Number 2 Pencil February 23, 2006 at 2:18 pm | | Reply

    Trophies for all

    At this point, should it still even be called a “trophy?” When a youth basketball league in Framingham finishes its season next month, every fifth- and sixth-grader will receive a shiny trophy. Even those on the last-place team. ”We want…

  4. John Rosenberg February 23, 2006 at 3:01 pm | | Reply

    Den – Good question. What I meant by “problematical” (without, I confess, giving it much thought) is that her middle school, drawing from a larger area than the elementary school, had a much higher percentage of poor students. Most of these were not black. In fact, I suspect that the proportion of black students was about the same as it had been in her elementary school. Although many of these poor students were Hispanic (from virtually all Latin American and even some South American countries), there were also many poor Asian as well. In addition, there was a problem with violent kids in this school that had not been true in elementary school, although that may be as much because of middle school itself, and the age of the kids, than this particular school

    I should add that the elementary school Jessie attended for first and second grades was the smallest in Fairfax County and we’d heard that the County had even tried (but failed) to close it down a year or two earlier because it was “lilly white.” Concerned about that reputation, my wife and and I met the Principal before Jessie entered and learned that in fact it was 42% minority. About the same as the school with the Gifted & Talented center that she attended for 3rd through 5th grades.

  5. JoeH February 23, 2006 at 3:24 pm | | Reply

    The “Gifted” program in our school has always been a hot button for me. In a district of over 12,000 K-8 students, 19 buildings and a budget that exceeds $135 million we allocate less than $300,000 to our “gifted” program. At best that is approximately four teachers. This same district allocates over $19 million for special and bi-lingual education. If there is discrimination in our district, it is leveled against the children who in fact are gifted. By failing to provide these children who are truly gifted, with an appropriate and challenging learning environment, IMHO we are putting our society as a whole at risk. It is these children who have the capacity or greater possibility to become leaders in the fields of science, engineering, the arts or any other endeavor that will benefit society at large. Not paying attention and nurturing these students seems to me to be short sided and dangerous.

    A disclaimer, I have no dog in this fight being retired and having no children. I also volunteer in our school district and work in a 7th grade class room teaching American History, so I see the results of very gifted students going unchallenged every day of the week.

  6. Den February 23, 2006 at 3:41 pm | | Reply

    John

    Thank you for your lengthy and very candid answer to my inquiry.

  7. Laura February 23, 2006 at 9:51 pm | | Reply

    You do have a dog in this fight, JoeH, because you are surrounded by the products of those schools and you depend on them for everything from flipping your hamburgers to brain surgery (should you ever need it).

  8. Richard Nieporent February 23, 2006 at 10:04 pm | | Reply

    They are experimenting with new ways to reach out to students who might have special abilities but may not have been recognized through traditional screening methods.

    Reed Richards, inventor and leader of the group gains the ability to stretch his body, and takes the name, Mr. Fantastic. His girlfriend, Sue Storm, gains the ability to turn invisible and create force fields, calling herself the Invisible Woman. Her younger brother Johnny Storm gains the ability to control fire, including covering his own body with flame, becoming the Human Torch. Pilot Ben Grimm is turned into a super-strong rock creature calling himself Thing.

  9. T February 24, 2006 at 12:29 am | | Reply

    All this will do is drive the gifted kids out of the school. This will lower the overall test scores of the school. As more minority parents flock to the school for these “inclusive” gifted programs, more white parents and their kids will flee to whiter schools, increasing segregation in schools.

    Liberals think they have won, but really they have lost. They will eventually ruin all faith in public education. And once education goes private, they will lose their power. People are attracted to and want to be part of excellence, not failure. By lowering standards, inflating grades, teaching PC drivel rather than real subject matter, raising property taxes and tuitions to unbelievable heights, and making themselves unable to be removed from their jobs and generally unaccountable, regular folks simply have no choice but to leave the system.

    We are, as a nation, moving into unchartered territory. The traditional ideas we have of schooling are being upended, I think permanently. People are home-schooling their kids in record numbers, and with the rising tuitions at colleges and universities, there are alternatives being invented to that as well (think online schools. eventually there will be “exit exams” or college competency tests for a fraction of the tuition costs, with no PC indoctrination).

    Like I said, the more these leftists win, the more they lose, because more people on the right are mobilizing, and they are driving more people to the right. And once those organizations are formed, they will stay in place for a long, long time. They are builiding their enemies’ house, and then filling it. What a bunch of dopes!

  10. La Shawn Barber's Corner February 24, 2006 at 9:33 am | | Reply

    Montgomery County Dumbs Down ‘Gifted’ Programs

    Because too few black students are enrolling in magnet school programs for the gifted, “educators” decided to experiment “with new ways to reach out to students who might have special abilities but may not have been recognized throu…

  11. dchamil February 24, 2006 at 10:31 am | | Reply

    Would those who avoid mention of giftedness be willing to concede that, say, Einstein was gifted? Even a little bit gifted?

  12. Gina Cobb February 24, 2006 at 2:25 pm | | Reply

    Gifted Education Exists for a Reason; Don’t Water it Down

    Montgomery County, Maryland is considering replacing gifted classes with magnet classes for everyone. I am not alone in thinking that this is a bad idea. Classes for mentally gifted children exist for a reason. Gifted kids are bored and frustrated in m…

  13. Jim B February 24, 2006 at 2:46 pm | | Reply

    Commenter T has it exactly right. One irony in this is that many of the same folks that push these PC programs angrily denounce voucher programs, saying they will drive the motivated kids out, and with them the public will to keep funding the system. At the same time, they’re pushing program changes such as the watering down of GT that will ultimately accomplish the same thing.

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