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No More Gifted in MoCo?
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Anonymous
Is it necessary to prove 1/8th race in MoCo? Colleges require no such proof. If a MoCo parent registers their child as Hispanic, or American Indian, is it questioned? How might a parent "prove" their child's race? It would seem to be a big advantage for any child to registered as one of the preferred minorities, or whatever the PC term is. It helps with getting GT services and helps with college apps too. I have to wonder why more MoCo parents don't take advantage of the race thing. |
Anonymous
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Fifteen years ago, I heard an elementary principal say that services for gifted kids really weren't necessary in MoCo because "everyone is well above average, particularly here in Bethesda, so our teachers are already teaching at a gifted level". Most parents in the audience that evening seemed pleased with that response. It meant that all of their kids were gifted, and so were they! Lake Wobegone, right there on the shores of the Potomac! The sad thing, these supposedly gifted parents offered no objections to the lack of services for their gifted children.
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Anonymous
I don't think the point is that all those children were gifted and therefore "better", or that the parents just wanted their egos assuaged, the point is that the teacher was able to differentiate and meet the children where they were, which happened to be above grade level I guess. Problems occur when teachers can't or won't differentiate, and simply teach everyone at the minimum standard. The kids who are working at above the minimum standard not being taught, they are marking time in the classroom. Without the label, there is less of an opportunity to "prove" to teachers and administrators that a particular child is capable of more accelerated work. |
Anonymous
More MoCo parents don't take advantage of the race thing because they can't; they really are white. As a black person I can attest that the race thing is a huge advantage. It just happens to be offset by some big historical disadvantages. Except for people assuming I'm my daughter's nanny, I haven't had too many problems in fair Bethesda. Most of the residents are equal-opportunity nasty. |
Anonymous
This was confusing to me. My daughter is an FCPS student and has always been in gifted programs. She came to FCPS in her fifth grade year. What does it mean that she is not identified as being gifted? The danger to this, as I see it, is that giftedness will solely come to mean high achievement. Lots of bright kids get straight A's but bright is not the same as gifted. Or truly gifted. Giftedness in FCPS has come to mean high achievement rather than how these kids think. As Stephanie Tolan writes, giftedness is a global integrative phenomenon, far more complex than just excellent grades and accolades. From "Is it a Cheetah?" http://stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm |
Anonymous
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An update from TheMoreChild blog:
http://themorechild.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/now-is-the-time-gta-issues-action-alert/ |
Anonymous
I don't understand this (I'm not HG). Stephanie Tolan writes that highly gifted children are easy to identify, yet she does not offer any way of identifying them, outside of extraordinary academic achievements (a child who teaches herself Greek at age 5, for example). She writes: "Highly gifted children are very different from each other so there is no single ability to look for even when they are performing; besides that, a child's greatest gifts could be outside the academic world's definition of achievement and so go unrecognized altogether." So, how does one identify a highly gifted child outside of extraordinary academic achievement? And can a "bright" child be an academic overachiever without being "highly gifted"? What's the difference? She offers no concrete examples of how educators can identify highly gifted children, and, should they be able to do so, Tolan gives no suggestions for what schools ought to do for these highly gifted children. She writes: "Educators can learn the attributes of unusual intelligence and observe closely enough to see those attributes in individual children. They can recognize not only that highly gifted children can do many things other children cannot, but that there are tasks other children can do that the highly gifted cannot." Again, not HG here, so, where are the examples? How is it possible for an educator (not HG, most likely) to identify such children if they are so different from one another, and often hide their gifts when in school? What tasks can "ordinary" children do that HG children cannot? I found the cheetah analogy labored at best. Yes, schools stifle HG kids, so what's new about that? (Albert Einstein flunked math, ya?) I don't understand what this poster is complaining about. Her DD is identified as gifted (but not given that label in FCPS), and takes part in gifted programs, yet she's worried the gifted concept is being watered down to mean only children who are bright and achieve academically? What does that mean? Is her child gifted in the "global" sense, or just a bright child who reads/does math far ahead of her grade level? How does she know? I'm interested in this question because I think my child is gifted. He has a lot of super smart ancestors and relations (not me, natch), and I watch the way he thinks, reasons and behaves that seem to me way outside of the box, far ahead of his peers and of my other (very smart) children. But he has not done anything academically extraordinary (he's 5). I've been told to have his IQ tested, but I resist that idea. In fact, I hate that idea. Aside from testing his IQ, how is he ever to be identified in school? I doubt very much he will. He'll be a cheetah in a 10 by 12 cage eating cat chow. Even if he's stuffed into a gifted program, that means he'll be moved into a slightly larger cage. What then, does one do with these children? I think asking schools to challenge truly gifted children commensurate with their abilities is the same thing as asking a zoo to replicate a cheetah's natural environment. It can't be done. Stephanie Tolan has no suggestions, does anyone? |
Anonymous
| The best advice I ever received for educating our HG child came from a well-regarded DC educational consultant/tester. They suggested schools that offered a rich, interesting and flexible curriculum and teaching philosophy that would allow our child to work at their own pace/level as needed, and the opportunity to "run with things" if they wanted to. There was not a lot of focus on tag vs. non tag specialization or tag peer groups. I know that this may sound very simplistic, but it made all the difference in the world for our child. |
Anonymous
| Why not insist that the child be taught at his level? If he's 6 and ready for 5th grade math, let him take 5th grade math. If he's in Kindergarten and wants to read Nancy Drew books, or the Hobbit, let him. If he wants to study ancient Romans, let him. Of course public schools can't/won't do that, so other arrangements must be made, either by home schooling or a very good private school who will let him soar. |
Anonymous
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I know a family of brilliant kids (six of them), all very high achievers. They went to terrible public schools (I know, we went to the same schools), their parents had no money for enrichment activities, but all are hugely successful intellectuals. How is this possible? The parents nurtured their children's intellects at home. The built a medieval city in their basement, acted out Greek plays, argued about global politics, ideas and books endlessly. The parents had great raw material to work with, but they kept the kids going, when school was, for them, a place to mark time.
Maybe public schools as they are currently set up are not able to nurture and challenge highly gifted kids. A few private schools may be more adaptable to the needs of a highly gifted child. But in the absence of a great private school, maybe the family is the place for the child to soar. |
Anonymous
This doesn't mean you should enter "1/8 of a certain race" on the form for magnet schools (now that G&T is going away). Just that there are boxes to check for what race you are. If you can truthfully check something besides white/non-hispanic, you should definitely do so. They don't ask income, so it's not about economic diversity. Which might be more meaningful. But at the open houses for magnets, they are quite explicit about having both racial and geographic diversity. To MCPS, geographic diversity means that not all the kids in the magnet come from, say, Potomac. Also, apparently they like to leave a good mix of kids in the home schools, and in candid moments they will mention this at some of the magnet open houses. This was the subject of a lawsuit 10-15 years ago, when applicants to a language immersion program were told their half asian-half white kid was a good candidate for the immersion program, but MCPS just didn't want to remove too many Asians from the home school (TPES). MCPS lost the lawsuit and a result the immersion programs are now by lottery. |
Anonymous
Why not get DCPS to transfer your kid to another public school? Or provide enrichment at home? |
Anonymous
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Just to play the devil's advocate here:
(1) Kids learn good socialization skills from being in the local public. Some recent studies have shown that social skills are as important as anything else in future success. (2) my mom would never tell us our IQs, because she said it was a no-win: if we learned we had low IQs we'd give up but -- and more relevant to the discussion here -- if we found out we were HG we might try less and just start coasting. Although both my kids were identified as G&T in MoCo, I've been ambivalent about what it means for them mentally. According to my kids, everybody in their classes knows who is pulled out of the class for G&T stuff, and who isn't. So both of these would be an argument for enriching at home, as opposed to tagging kids as special. I'm ambivalent about these things myself. And I certainly don't work for MCPS (which I think fails G&T kids in many ways). But I would like to throw them out there, because I don't think it's as black-and-white as some posters here are saying. |
Anonymous
Neither would mine, and I won't with my kids either. But I still went to G&T programs and they didn't make me intellectually lazy--those were the places I actually had to work hard! |
Anonymous
So do you actually believe that the rest of us, the lioness moms of the "slower" lion cubs, are out to kill off the much faster cheetah cubs so they won't compete with our own progency? This "victim" thinking won't help you much in your own life. |