Posted on 12/16/2008 5:03:37 PM PST by wac3rd
The label of gifted, as prized to some parents as a "My Child Is an Honor Student" bumper sticker, is about to be dropped by the Montgomery County school system.
Officials plan to abandon a decades-old policy that sorts second-grade students, like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, into those who are gifted (the Star-Belly sort) and those who are not. Several other school systems in the region identify children in the same manner. But Montgomery education leaders have decided that the practice is arbitrary and unfair.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Two-fifths of Montgomery students are considered gifted on the basis of aptitude tests, schoolwork, expert opinion and parents' wishes. Officials say the approach slights the rest of the students who are not so labeled. White and Asian American students are twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to be identified as gifted."
MD edu ping
Sorting by merit is discrimination! The only fair way to sort students is by ......ummm.....uhhhh......height.
Short people are inferior.
My boys were always in the Gifted programs but I never thought they should be called that since it inflated their opinions of themselves. Both survived well enough though.
Given that this is MoCo, presumably there is a whole superstructure of specialists, etc. who have been associated with the GT program.
Do you think anyone will be dismissed as no longer necessary? /s
Harrison Bergeron, the protagonist of the story, has exceptional intelligence, height, strength and beauty and thus has to bear enormous handicaps. These include headphones that play distracting noises, three hundred pounds of weight strapped to his body, forty pounds of birdshot around his neck, eyeglasses designed to give him headaches, and a rubber ball on his nose, black caps on his teeth, and shaven eyebrows to hide his beauty. Despite these societal handicaps, he is able to invade a TV station and declare himself emperor. He strips himself of his handicaps, then dances with a ballerina whose handicaps he has also discarded. Both are shot dead by the brutal and relentless Handicapper General. The story is framed by an additional perspective from Bergeron's parents, who are watching the incident on TV, but because of their handicaps cannot concentrate enough to appreciate what occurs nor remember it.
Good to see the Compost writing to their reader's level.
I have a child in the ‘gifted program’. This report is absolute malarkey. This is the ‘philosophy’ as ‘not using red ink to grade a paper’...and NO COMPETITION. They just want a bunch of weenies to grow a country, huh? Good, fair competition is HEALTHY! One strives to be better (better themselves) according to one’s ability or those they aspire to be like.
Dear friends of mine had a son (now 33) who was labeled “gifted”. His parents spent $10k to $15k a year for special schooling to have him achieve his potential. This is money they sacrificed for a dream to achieve the lads potential and really couldn't afford it and went into debt. It turns out our “gifted” boy dropped out of high school in his senior year and lived as homeless person for awhile. He married an older woman with a child 5 years younger than he was and lives in a mobile home and works in a factory. He hasn't read a book in 15 years and couldn't name the vice president of the US or identify Nancy Pelosi.
“My Child is a F*****g Retard. We are all Democrats.”
The elimination of the gifted and talented programs parallel nicely the same mentality of the unions. In a union shop the workers are discouraged from excelling. The “we are all in this together” mentality states that if you excel, you will only raise the bar for the rest of us. Now we can’t have that.
It is the same in education when the terrible teachers are paid the same as the excellent teachers. When this system prevails, only the highly motivated, dedicated and moral teachers will strive for excellence from themselves and their students. This kind of teacher is hard to find and almost impossible to maintain in a climate of “just do what you need to do to get by.”
By eliminating the gifted classification, the desire to excell can be destroyed at a very young age.
Our education system spends to few resources fertilizing the productive, and to many resources fertilizing the weeds.
It is known as the dumbing down of America. It has now begun to work for the Democrats. How else could Obama get elected?
My daughter was in honors everything but never thought she was better than anybody else. She worked very hard to achieve and was rewarded accordingly. When they take away the reward for achievement, then there will be no bar to reach. Then they can all have babies in high school, do crack and live at home till they're 30 because hard work isn't that relative after all.
My daughter? Now in her early 30's is still a top achiever. She just won the top award for her district and region with her company and is soon to be featured on the cover of her corporate magazine. And she's still just an average girl that wants to do the best at what she does.
That attitude should be cultivated in schools, not smothered.
A very touchy subject, when considering a specific race or creed in ANY analysis. But my personal analysis is this, If your kid’s smarter then the average kid, GOOD FOR YOU, and GOOD FOR THEM, if your kid ain’t, HELP YOUR KID as much as you can, to be the best he or she can be, AND be gratefull that we live in a nation where eugenics, racisim, and all manner of stupid thought, was rejected by the founders of this nation. It might have took some time before our nation fullfilled what it stood for.
But I’m very proud of the fact that we did what we as a nation have done, We had a real and costly war, WITH OURSELVES! And were blessed afterwards by certain folk to make us a more whole and fair nation, NEVER FORGET THAT. Folks have given the ultimate sacrifice so that we can all have equality. In the law, (most important), and in the support of whatever YOU belive in:
Support of a candidate, check.
Support of a Church, Synagog(SP), Mosque, etc. check.
The list of our freedoms and equality goes on.
So, if you think your kid is so smart, that you HAVE to put a bumper sticker on your car, you deserve criticisim, Becase YOUR being stupid. You open yourself up to criticism, and I swear, if I see a “Baby on board” car sign again on the interstate,... well I’ll be nice, I may make a geusture or three.
makes me wanna puke...
I have two friends who worked at union shops in HS and in college; one at the Ralph’s Supermarket in Glendale and the other in Hayward as a welder.
They both worked hard and finished early their first month, then moved on to other tasks they saw unfinished, just to assist for the hour or so left in the shift.
BOTH (separate jobs/separate parts of CA/separate unions) were both taken aside by their managers and told, “what, are your trying to show us all up? Take it easy, you don’t need to rush.”
One friend (conservative today) quit the next week, the other is an overweight, whiny Obama voter who cries at his $120,000 salary (currently laid off).
40% of Montgomery students are considered gifted on the basis of aptitude tests, schoolwork, expert opinion and parents' wishes...since the last two don't count, i'd say it's less than 20%
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