A student sent me this article and I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback on it. Take the time to read it and please reply.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/03/15/the-poor-neglected-gifted-child/rJpv8G4oeawWBBvXVtZyFM/story.html
I definitely think that the school system needs to separate gifted students from a young age. Especially at the grammar school level, gifted students need different kinds of attention and teaching than the average ten year old. As a public education system, it is the responsibility of the school system to provide each student with an education that best fits them. One size fits all might work for hats, but most certainly doesn't for education. There are classes for special education, aids are available for students with special needs, why would an exceptional student be any different? No one bats an eye at appropriating resources for remedial education which arguably is wasting resources that could be better used by exceptional or even average students. As of now, I would argue that the best and brightest succeed in adulthood despite the American education system, not because of it.
ReplyDeletethere are parts of the country that provide special education for the top 1%.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree fully that there needs to be more emphasis on a separate curriculum for Gifted students, I think we need to be very careful with the separation of gifted students. There are certain schools that separate students into achievement levels in Kindergarten, and that distinction alone often determines what classes they will be taking through elementary and middle schools. I've seen research implying that students placed in the 'Gifted' classes often succeed more simply because they've been told that they are gifted, or because teachers treat the Gifted class differently, whereas students in other classes are demotivated by not being gifted. The labels themselves make a difference. It also presents a problem for, as the article mentioned, students whose giftedness appears later in life, after the initial classification, or for whom the classification tests don't necessarily reveal their giftedness. Students who transfer in, also, are often placed incorrectly. It is much easier to recognize students who are placed higher than they should be, than to recognize students who are not placed high enough. If young students don't have parents that recognize their talents and are willing to advocate for them, they are often caught in the web of boredom and frustration.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think that teaching based on age is the wrong way to go. I understand that we don't have a system that could practically operate otherwise, but people learn at different paces. Just because a first-grader isn't at the same reading comprehension level as other first-graders doesn't mean that he is learning impaired, or that he is at a lower academic level than the rest of the first-graders, or that he will never excel at reading comprehension. Just because a first-grader has the vocabulary of a fifth-grader doesn't mean he's prepared for fifth grade. Some schools are getting better with allowing grade-level leniency, but No Child Left Behind and other recent reforms are certainly not making things any better.
Specifically at Dulaney, one example of this neglect is the alleged removal of Gifted and Talented classes. We've seen it in the English classes, where eleventh and twelfth grade classes have Honors and Advanced Placement available to them, but nothing in between. Personally, I feel that it's done nothing more than increase the gaps between the levels, and cause more stress to students. GT English students entering their Junior year have to make the choice between the stress of an AP class, which is undeniably quite a step up from GT and contains a great deal more stress with the pace, comprehension, and material covered for the exams, or the honors course - which, for a lot of higher-level students, means a year of tedium and boredom with the lower-level curriculum and less time for individual interaction with larger class sizes. They are literally being forced to choose between the boredom that the article points out and tacking more stress onto a year already stressed with all of the joys of college applications, potential job interviews, driving, and often several other AP classes.
With rumors that GT will soon be cut out of freshman and sophomore English classes, along with several of the sciences and potentially other classes, I'm concerned with what this means specifically for incoming students. When I was a freshman I took no AP courses, but over the course of my high school education I have taken nine. It's by no means an unusual number, especially for what I think of as the 'GT' track students. I know there are freshmen that enter Dulaney taking two APs, and I know that there are Juniors and Seniors taking six or seven, but from my understanding the average student doesn't take an AP until sophomore year, and even then usually only one or two. By forcing students off of the GT path, we're pushing gifted students into crowded honors classes or loading several textbooks-worth of stress onto freshmen who shouldn't have to deal with that.
Wow, that was longer than I thought. Sorry? :D
DeleteWell stated
DeleteWhat do you think about making gifted students skip grades?
I don't think it would help as much as many people think. I think that it's a matter of gifted children being able to learn and understand the curriculum much faster than it is taught in the standard or honors-level courses. When you get up to the really advanced high school courses, I suppose it is more of being challenged with the content, but for the most part I think that the pace is too slow for them. The students do the work faster than their peers, and then they’re still left waiting for everyone to catch up. I think that’s the great appeal of GT and AP courses, is that they cover more material and they cover it more in-depth. For example, we might have spent a month in honors Calculus going over derivatives, whereas in AP Calc AB we covered the same material in a few days and moved onto the practical applications and what you can do with a derivative.
DeleteAnother thing to consider is students that, maybe they are on a much higher level of mathematics than their current grade, but are simply average in the rest of their courses. Skipping a grade or even two might have them on a more appropriate mathematics course, but struggling with other classes. Not to mention the social consequences - most people have a set of friends within their own grade, and a lot of that friendship tends to focus around similar struggles within their class and their courses. I know very gifted students who would rather remain in their grade and be bored with the content than move up two grade levels and be isolated from the rest of their friends.
I think that the best way to educate is by teaching people based on their levels of proficiency, regardless of their age. I can't even begin to imagine how to implement such a system, but it's unrealistic to think that everyone of the same age is on the same academic level in every course. That's an exaggeration, of course, but the concept is more or less true.
Each year there is a diminution of the strength of the GT program across the county. Parents opting to place their children into GT sections versus hybrids does all courses and students a disservice. Class standards are slowly lowered. Therefore, very few populations needs are met.
ReplyDeleteBy truly challenging all students at all levels maybe the flight to GT/AP classes could be avoided. Also, challenging to the "best and brightest" might be the best way to decrease it's enrollment numbers. Class sizes for gifted students tend to be larger, meaning they tend not to get as much individual attention as students in other classes which are purposely created to decrease class size. If a low class size is good for one group, then why not another?
Where do we put our capital? Both sweat equity and money.
Oh, by the way Gifted and Talented classification is also classified as special needs. Are they treated as such?
I think we also have to think about how we use our resources. I know that Democracy prep on the same budget that we have, are able to hire twice the number of teachers. So that begs the question, where does our money go?
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Lanie stated about getting tracked into programs, that can be dangerous. We always need to allow people to move to their present day level. I know today many of our students heard from a past student who turned on the switch later in life. We need to allow those type of people access into our top programs.