Reply to How is Hardy and their Gifted program doing this year?

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Reply to "How is Hardy and their Gifted program doing this year?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was reading Amada Ripley's book The Smartest Kids in the World focusing on why American schools are not cutting it relative to other high performing systems like Finland or South Korea or even Poland.  She had a lot of points she was trying to make, but one of them that stood out too me is that the U.S. has an obsession with identifying kids as "smart"  i.e. gifted, but if we actually had rigorous classrooms this is a not really necessary and more effective. It is my understanding that this is the point of the school enrichment model.  While I have been in tracked systems and get why they can be important I wonder if part of our obsession is really what is holding back our education system.  [/quote]

Finland, Poland, South Korea..where are the millions of 4th and 5th generation housing project kids with barely literate parents in these countries?  Where are the families where nobody's had a decent job since the Great Society Programs kicked in under President Johnson?

In DC, if you don't identify the most capable and disciplined poor kids as "smart" and track them with high-achieving, affluent peers, you run a high risk of short-changing them for life, because the emphasis in DCPS from around 2nd grade up remains on remedial work.  Enrichment models sound wonderful but get silly by the upper elementary grades in highly diverse DC schools.  DC needs a system of comprehensive TAG/pullout/Gifted/advanced programs period.   When you talk to parents whose advanced or gifted kids are bored silly half the day in diverse schools like Hardy, it's easy to see that Amanda Ripley doesn't know urban American ed issues.

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