What is the Best School Strategy for Bright Kids?

For more than 30 years more and more school resources have been reallocated from high-ability/achieving kids to the lowest achievers. Especially in states like California, most school districts have eviscerated gifted programs and pushed teachers to prioritize "the most vulnerable among us." This, of course, is exacerbated by the Democrat-initiated, Republican-embraced No Child Left Behind, which has fundamentally shifted how schools treat and help low-achieving kids but has actually taken resources away from above-average to do it.

A final nail in gifted kids' education coffin is that the average IQ of teachers, especially in the elementary school, has declined. I won’t delve into the fact that many of the best teachers in previous generations were the best and brightest women in the job field (who were unlikely to attain great positions in other fields at the time) and that today women have moved into high positions in nearly all industries (example, they represent half of medical school and law school students). I’ll just say that it is possible that the newer teachers are, perhaps, less capable of teaching gifted kids. And they're less motivated too. Many new teachers are likely to think that the gifted kids will do fine on their own. And they focus on the low achievers.

So, a lucid approach to helping bright kids to live up to their potential accepts that many teachers will do little to help them. That explains why the research finds that the most powerful strategy for helping gifted kids to live up to their potential is grade skipping: for gifted kids to skip between one and six grades, depending on the student. That requires far less teacher ability or effort than, for example, providing more cognitively complex instruction for the gifted student(s) in their increasingly heterogeneous classes.

Now, parents' main concern about grade skipping is social maturity. Even if your high-ability child isn't socially adept, in many cases, it's wiser to have him or her skip a grade(s) than to endure the ongoing boredom and lack of learning that comes from being in a too low-achieving class. Also, grade skipping reduces the chances of a gifted child being ridiculed by classmates as a snob or showoff.

You can mitigate the social risk of grade-skipping by:
• Trying to get another gifted child accelerated into your child's new class.
• Having your child sit next to a kind, socially adept student(s) who can teach your child the higher grade's social and academic norms.
• Ensuring that the receiving teacher will welcome your child and be willing to keep an eye on your child to ensure s/he's being welcomed into the class and to give your child needed feedback, social and academic.

To maximize your chances of getting permission to have your child skip a grade, present to the principal a portfolio including:
• Samples of your child's in- and out-of-school work that suggest the ability to handle the work in a higher grade.
• Samples of work assigned in his current class that demonstrate how beneath his ability or achievement level that work is.
• Standardized test score results.
• Research supporting grade skipping, including those studies that address the social maturity and knowledge-gap issues. An easy way to assemble the research is to print pages from the book Genius Denied. Because principals tend to be very busy, highlight the key sentences.
• If your child writes well, include a letter from your child explaining why it's important s/he be allowed to skip a grade(s).
• Have your child verbally join you in making the case for skipping a grade(s).

Remember that this strategy is best for students in elementary and middle school. Most high schools still have the Advanced, Honors, and Advanced Placement courses to help gifted students thrive and learn. For more on accelerating gifted kids, see the Hoagie's Gifted website on acceleration: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/acceleration.htm and/or the book, Acceleration Strategies.

Federal Money for Higher Education?

America is a great nation that once led the world in many fields, metrics, and policy issues. Now, unfortunately, that is not always the case. In recent years there have been laws passed and programs generated to “correct the course” and “reform” the system… Two such endeavors are the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” and the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top”.

No Child Left Behind enacted the theories of standards-based education reform, which is based on the belief that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education. The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, if those states are to receive federal funding for schools. The standards are set by each individual state. However idealistic this may sound what tends to happen is that teachers spend time teaching the students to pass these standardized tests (because the results are measured and reported) instead of simply teaching the material. States are praised for closing “poor performing” schools, which were the same schools that had little funding to begin with, they are praised when “eliminating” the “poor performing” teachers (generally those with no resources because… oh yeah, they had no funding), while those “high performing” schools continue to receive their funding and “high performing” teachers get raises based of these test results.

Race to the Top is quickly becoming one of most successful federal education programs in memory. Governors and legislatures nationwide have been scrambling to put major school reforms in place, all in hopes of grabbing a piece of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top pie. See the Race to the Top criteria for funding: Click Here

There is no Race to the Top or No Child Left Behind for higher education. But should there be? True, some colleges and universities snared millions of dollars from the stimulus bill with virtually no strings attached, but they got nothing like the support lavished on elementary and secondary education. And sure, there is a need for reform in many different levels: class sizes, transfer issues, graduation rates, teaching, college readiness, etc. But don’t let these institutions of higher learning fool you. They exist, like any business, to generate revenue. The State and Federal government only give subsidies (Dictionary.com – “Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest.”) to support the school because education is generally viewed as a public good.

Now, in the down economy they have received less in the way of subsidies and therefore the cost of attendance has risen (tuition being the chief source of revenue). We have seen tuition and fees almost skyrocket recently. Some schools have spent down their endowment; some have eliminated programs, cut faculty and staff, merged departments, and done everything short of becoming sponsored by a private company (Which sounds better: University of Nike or Coca-Cola College?) to remain open in the budget crunch.

The good news for higher education is that there is an immediate opportunity for all institutions of higher education to join this federal money race. Congress is now working to reform the student-loan industry by taking tens of billions of dollars in subsidies away from for-profit lenders and using the money to boost Pell Grants, improve public colleges, and enact policies designed to raise graduation rates. This is good news because we should start to see Pell Grants become larger and more students become eligible for them (thus increasing the amount of federal funding to each school – provided they enroll these financially needy students). Maybe colleges and universities that want federal funding beyond what is already given should seek these students instead of enlisting another huge reform package that may end like we’ve seen with previous Acts…