Discriminations

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?

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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!

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

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.