There are no more “gifted” students… at least not in Montgomery County, Maryland. Officials at the school district of one of the most affluent suburbs in the nation have voted to drop the label that many parents have fought hard to get for their children. This post takes a quick look at what gifted education is and at the Washington Post article.
In many places, Gifted & Talented Education (GT) is actually a sub-program of Special Education. Many universities offer specialized Master’s degrees in it and many states have additional licensing standards in order to qualify to teach these special classes of special students.
The justification is that some children have higher IQ’s and that not all children learn at the same rates:
“Good teachers know that within certain parameters, different kids learn at different rates.”
~Peg Tyre, The Trouble With Boys, p. 85
In discussing GT with people, I find that people either strongly support it (parents with children identified as GT), or they feel that it is an unfair use of money and resources. Unfair, because they ask:
Why should kids who already have it easy in school and many advantages get special treatment and more attention just because they might be bored?
Although there is a certain amount of merit to that point of view, GT is more than simply special attention. From the GT classrooms that I have visited (at all levels), only a portion of the students’ day tended to be devoted to the “normal” curriculum that was state-mandated and what their counterparts were learning. The rest was given over to additional assignments and inquiry projects. This extra work was usually (not always) averaged in with the regular assignments—not as something additional. This means the students in the GT program did have to work harder to achieve the same grades. Of course, the point that they are starting off with better resources is true, but they can’t help that. The myth that these kids are easier to teach or that there are no behavior problems with “the smart” ones is quickly dispelled.
The law (EEOA of 1974) demands a “free, appropriate education” be given to all students. If GT students have certain abilities that can only be nurtured in a specialized classroom then they should be there.
If special education were simply removed and all students with disabilities mainstreamed there would be outcry from the parents of both general population and special education students. If they were thrown out of school altogether because they did not meet the norm, there would be allegations of cruelty for not providing an education to a child.
The same types of arguments could be used to defend Gifted & Talented programs. If a child is not challenged in a classroom it will be difficult to reach potential and can sometimes even make it more difficult to learn the same material as others. The same way it would be tragic to not provide any type of education for someone with an education of 75, why why should we deny an appropriate education to someone with an IQ of 125?
Thankfully, that is not what Montgomery County Schools is doing. Rather, they are simply doing away with the label of “gifted”. Forty percent of students in the Montgomery district have been identified as “gifted,” which seems abnormally high to me.
The real issue is the inconsistency in what is offered in GT education and the treatment that does come from it. Although at least one parent fears that “if Montgomery school officials don’t ‘give these kids a name, they can ignore the real fact they exist.’” There is some logic there and we have definitely seen this occur when the changing labels that has occurred in special education in the past. But, Montgomery is only dropping the label, and not the services.
The district’s goal seems to be move back to educating all children and providing the services that are appropriate for an individual child based on his or her development, and not his or her label—which can be assigned from a high test score, or a principal persuaded by “expert opinion” or parent wishes. This, from a district that even has a Highly Gifted Center in addition to its regular gifted classes.
It would seem that the program was not only looking different at different schools, i.e. the way that classes were taught, or what was provided, but also in who was getting in, i.e. what were the standards for the label. Additionally the program was becoming a way to discriminate the Haves from the Have-nots. As in, who had the inherently “smart kids” based on genetics, who had the money to hire psychologists and tutors since the child was born, and who had the political influence to have their child in whatever classes they want vs. those who… didn’t and left themselves to be discriminated against, receiving the leftovers of school funding and teachers.
GT originally came about as a way to identify students who could benefit. Soon, the social status of having a child identified as “gifted” or in “honors” classes began to rise. I can only imagine that it was due partly to the bumper sticker encouragement by schools, such as the one below:
Which naturally spawned the joke bumper stickers. Two of my favorites are:
and
The first one wasn’t actually a bumper sticker though. It was just a piece of paper taped to the rear window.
If you have any more bumper stickers like these, I would love to read them. Send a picture if you can.
Citation
Vise, D. D. (2008, December 16). Montgomery Erasing Gifted Label. The Washington Post, B01.
Further Reading
This blogpost has reminded me of a book 'Outliers' that i read a couple of months ago. In this book the author Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out many social, economic and cultural factors which are in play in a child's life. He has stressed on the fact that the role of these factors is very strong in influencing and shaping a person's life. He has talked about Chris Langan, a man with an extraordinary high IQ, who did not succeed in getting a good shot at life mostly because of missed oopurtunities and remained undiscovered for a long time. People may or may not agree with Gladwell's observations, but I truly support the advantages of recognizing a gifted child and offering GT, under whichever name or label that makes everybody or nobody happy.
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