October 2, 2010

I had posted to the ITFORUM discussion of "Education Nation" on 9/28/10. Everyone was adding their thoughts to what is wrong with the educational systems. Many posted ideas on money, parental involvement, policies, lack of administration, etc. I added a post about the gifted students being left behind. I have copied it to this post below. I was very disappointed that no one commented-even in a negative way. It took me three days before I added this post, because I was taking a risk by adding a controversial comment and was prepared to defend my stand. To my surprise there was no comment. I guess I am not worthy or those who read it (if they did) didn't even consider it worth their time to even comment. Is this another indication of the anti-intellectualism that pervades our society that even university professors (intellectuals) do not even consider worth talking about?

"I believe that one of the problems in our schools is that our focus is only with the low end learners, at the expense of the high end learners; throwing the baby out with the bath water. Please do not misunderstand, I am not against the teachers working with students who have not mastered the content/skills/objectives, but not when the high-end learners are left with nothing to learn. Gifted students enter school with 40-50% of the content already mastered, yet teachers make the students do the previously learned work, fostering underachievement. We must provide for ALL students.

One strategy that is strongly recommended is clustering groping (Gentry, 1999 & 2009). This is an administrative decision to reduce the number of achievement levels within a classroom from six (with varying levels within each level) to three. Teachers can have a better response to instruction, differentiating the lessons/activities/ etc. to meet the needs of all students. This is not tracking because the cluster groups can change each year and there's flexible grouping within each class.

I hope I am preaching to the choir about Gifted. Anti-intellectualism seems to be the predominant theme in the United States. Gifted students have special needs that must be met, just like disability students, in order to learn to their potential: accelerated pacing, and increased depth and complexity in their learning. Gifted students may be gifted in one domain area or in everything or be highly creative. When these students' needs are not met, they can be the worst behavior problems in schools, or just drop out of school. These students are the next professors, teachers, inventors, leaders, etc., and yet we do not provide rigorous curriculum.

Other nations are nurturing their brightest minds to help these students reach their potential. We need to do that too, and not just at the high school level with AP/IB courses. We need to start when the students are in elementary school."