Reply to anyone hear-- there's a GT forum for MoCo

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[quote=Anonymous]I subscribe to the GTA listserve and it very often appears to be a forum for the same 5 or 6 people to continue a debate that I have a hard time comprehending.  I wish they would take their debate offline.  I am reluctant to post messages because the debates often get very heated and personal.  
The GTA itself, on the other hand seems to be very different and I fully support their "Challenge every child" memo and I encourage everyone interested in education policy to read it.  
I read all 100+ comments on the GTA website that will hopefully reach Mr. Starr before the meeting and there were some common threads.  Most of them were from the parents of children who are either in a HGC/magnet or were good candidates for these programs.  My daughter is in an elementary school magnet but we have more or less decided we cannot send her to one in middle school because of the commute (we live on the west and both middle school magnets are on the east side).  There are lots of families like ours who posted comments.  Many of us want our children to receive an the best possible education without having to uproot them from their neighbors and community and make them ride on a bus for 15 hours a week.  We would like our home schools to provide our children with an appropriate education and I (and looking at the comments I am in good company) think that is best achieved by having the school offer these children a more challenging  curriculum and a robust peer group (at least 8 children at the same level in any class).  This is not a zero sum game folks - all our children are better off when every child gets what they need.  If your child was struggling and needed remedial help, I would support your effort to get those resources.  Likewise, asking for what my child needs is not an attempt to take something away from someone else's child.  
What is happening at MCPS is that middle schools are gradually jettisoning honors level classes.  They do offer "advanced" classes but these are open to anyone who wishes to take them which means that the instruction has to be on grade to make sure the teacher is reaching all the students.  I fail to see how the above-average or below-average flourishes under this approach.   These children are not asking for something "extra", they are asking for what is "appropriate".  Keeping a highly gifted child in a regular classroom just to ensure "equity" for the other students is unfair to the highly gifted child.  It is also wrong-headed and cruel.  
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