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[quote=Anonymous]

[quote]Are we talking about MoCo or Calcutta?  Lol.[/quote]

[quote]The good ole US of A, right here in MoCo. If you ever stepped foot in a homeless shelter or worked with charities dealing with impoverished families, talked to a foster child... or had any exposure to "others" beyond watching reruns of "Cops", you would know that. But you like being willfully ignorant of such things. It justifies your inflated sense of superiority and refusal to see beyond your own narrow world views. Careful, don't trip on your sheet on your way to becoming completely irrelevant.  :roll:

Anyway...
Totally agree with the poster who pointed out that the key is to challenge kids and provide a good education for the youngest of learners. That's why it's completely stunning to me that a so-called blue state like Maryland doesn't have funded preschool and pre-K programs for all kids, regardless of income. I mean, red states like Georgia and Tennessee have this. 
Much of the achievement gap has its roots in early childhood education (or the lack of it). 
The kids of middle and higher SES parents can afford to send their kids to pricey preschools (and I don't knock them or blame them for this...heck, I've done it). They are better educated--often due to a generations-long series of privilege--and use more honed vocabulary--a proven brain booster for young learners. Healthy diets, exposure to music as infants, all of this helps.
Meanwhile, the lowest income kids, who due to institutionalized inequity, start off behind. Parents who may not have access to healthier food choices, education, etc... Early Head Start and Head Start try hard to correct for this, but in many areas in MoCo that's only a few hours a day. For a parent working some 10 hour shift job, this kind of staggered day is impossible to balance. So the child goes into an affordable daycare that likely may not have an educational underpinning. Or the child stays home with a relative who may not have the background or bandwidth to educate the little one at home.
Meanwhile, his/her more affluent peers are learning the rudiments of literacy and math in preschool. Nature walks provide hands on science learning. Arts, music, foreign language...all of these things get little minds working overtime.
So, by the time all of these kids arrive for kindergarten, the kids with good preschool educations are already ahead. Meanwhile, the lower SES child is already behind.
The gap broadens from there as the kids are grouped by ability and differentiated math and reading. Teachers in Title 1 and Focus schools (the good ones at least) try to catch everyone up, but it's a lot to overcome. [b]Throw in ESL and it's a herculean task to get everyone on level.[/b]
Jump ahead three years and it's a rare child that can overcome that kind of gap.
[b]If you want to preserve the integrity of HGC and ensure fair and across the board standards--start at both ends of the equation. Open access now so that more kids might get that type of education and get a long awaited intellectual jolt. And advocate that all children receive access to an enriched and free preschool education. Level the playing field for toddlers and watch the brightest of all hues rise to the top. [/b][/quote][/quote]

[quote]I am an ESOL teacher in a MCPS school with a Pre-K program. I will say that a student having a language other than English will not automatically mean the student is struggling to catch up for all eternity. What matters most is the language the student has been exposed to before they step foot in school. It doesn't matter if it's Spanish, Japanese or Arabic--if a student has been exposed to rich language and understands basic concepts such as colors, numbers, shapes, word vs. letter vs. sentence etc. in their first language then it won't take long to transfer those skills into English. Sure, there may be some lag time between being below benchmark and meeting benchmark but it will happen relatively quickly. I've had students arrive from other countries in 1st grade and be accepted into HGC at the end of 3rd grade. These students' families value education and have been exposing their kids to a variety of experiences to build their background knowledge.

The issue is with students who come in with no exposure to rich language, whether it be in English or another language. You can tell the families who see it as free daycare and treat it as such vs. the families who see it as an educational opportunity. We have some students who leave Pre-K at the end of the year who still can't recognize the letters in their name despite being exposed to them every single day. Same with colors, shapes etc.  There is no reinforcement of these concepts at home. Some parents barely even speak to their child, unfortunately. The Pre-K program doesn't take absences into consideration and a lot of students miss many days or come in late with no repercussion.  Those students go to Kindergarten not much better off than if they hadn't been in Pre-K which is the cold, hard truth.

The curriculum assumes students have a certain amount of background knowledge and the truth is that many of them in low SES schools have very little. Teachers are caught in a Catch 22, because they're pressured to get through all of the curriculum but in order for students to truly understand what's being presented to them their background knowledge has to be built which is very time consuming and puts them behind. So, to leave 70% of the students behind in order to get through the pacing the county requires? Most good teachers won't do that but it comes at a price.

So to say that all students need to be "challenged" from Day 1 and then they'd all be candidates for HGC--many students already are being challenged just to learn the basics that many DCUM kids arrive to school with. Honestly, I was completely shocked when I moved to a Focus school from a school that draws from a population of well-educated, high SES families. It's really night and day.

Unfortunately, some students [i]are[/i] getting a long awaited intellectual jolt when they start school. Some take it and run. Others struggle with just the basics and do so for years because it's very difficult to catch up when you're starting so far behind.

In addition, I've had a few students be accepted into the HGC after teachers have advocated to the parents for them to take the test but the parents ultimately decide for them to not attend. The issue is one of logistics. If they live within walking distance of the school then the parent doesn't have to worry about them getting to school or getting home from school, especially if an older sibling or grandparent is responsible for them at those times. If they go to HGC and miss the bus or have a doctor appointment, the parent doesn't have a way to get them to school or home from school. Many parents don't have cars or there is one car per family and the parent with the car works far from the school. For that reason, I am anxious to see how the pilot will work. Hopefully it will encourage some students who wouldn't ordinarily be able to attend for logistical reasons to be able to attend. We'll see. [/quote]

This. --classroom teacher in Title 1 school [/quote]

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