Why Should We Care About the Gifted Kids?

Most people would agree that all children are entitled to an opportunity to learn. What then does it mean to learn? The dictionary defines learning as “acquiring knowledge or skill.” When gifted students are sitting in a classroom being taught material that they already know can we say that they are “learning”? Aren’t they then being denied a basic right that we believe all young people are entitled to?

I have been stunned lately by the disregard for gifted students in our public schools. I hear, “But they can already pass the tests.” or “ We need to focus on the lower students to bring our test scores up.” I even heard, “Let’s just have the gifted students teach the struggling students. That will give the gifted students something to do and will bring up our test scores.” It is well known that people learn material better when they need to teach it but if our gifted students are spending their time being ignored and teaching others, when are they given the opportunity to learn? This goes beyond funding and test scores. This is a civil rights issue and it criminal to have these students sitting in classrooms day after day spending their time doing work that keeps them busy but does not contribute to their learning.

The San Bruno Park School District has budgeted over $300,000 dollars for Special Ed Funding for the 2010-2011 school year. Special Ed. Funding is federally mandated so the district must follow the guidelines and the money must be spent. Funding for gifted education is not currently federally mandated. Guess how much the San Bruno Park School District will spend on gifted education next year. The answer is $0. I do not deny that students in special ed. need special services but it neglect to have so many services for those students and none for the gifted students.

If we think about 100 as a median IQ, students who are two standard deviations below the mean (IQ of 70) are required by law to have special services. Students who are two standard deviations above the mean (IQ of 130) have no federal protection and thus have no services. If a student has an IQ of four standard deviations below the mean (IQ of 40) they would be in a special day class and it would be unlikely that they could be mainstreamed into a regular classroom. For students with an IQ of four standard deviations above the mean (IQ of 160), they are usually stuck in regular classrooms doing the same work that their classmates are doing. Or they are home schooled because parents cannot find a place that will work for them in the school system. Laws have been enacted to make sure that some students are given the opportunity to learn but they have neglected to extend that right to all students.

Underachievement is the number one problem facing gifted students and it comes from the students being denied the opportunity to learn important skills such as perseverance, study skills, and the value of practice. These skills would be learned by engaging in challenging work that is commensurate with a child’s academic needs.

The bigger issue for me is the waste of these young minds. Imagine what a gifted student could do with years of learning under their belt. If they were given the opportunity to make continuous progress in school year after year imagine what they would be capable of by the end of high school. Now imagine the opposite, what they will have gained from years of classroom experiences in which they haven’t been challenged in the least? Gifted students are going to be movers and shakers in our world. They are bright. They are intense. They are able to take many different parts of a problem and put them together in a coherent whole. Why aren’t we shaping this and giving them the tools to learn to be leaders in our world?

This week a group of gifted first graders dutifully completed the page in their math book. They had to circle whether the crayon was “next to” or “far from” the glue bottle. Then they had to circle whether the marker was “in front of” or “behind” the scissors. These are words these students learned when they were two and three years old. I don’t see how this work guides them on their educational path. I don’t see the critical thinking skills and higher order thinking that I would hope would be part of the tool box of tomorrow’s leaders.

I fear for our future. If our students, all of them, not just the gifted ones, are only being taught the most basic material and how to be experts at filling in the blanks, I don’t know how they are going to solve problems in our world that are big and messy and don’t have simple solutions like a fill-in-the-blank worksheet. As we sit and focus on test scores we are losing sight of the fact that we need to teach students to think.

Creating the internet, inventing a computer, developing a hybrid car. I can guarantee these were not things people learned how to do from a worksheet. Who knows what challenges we will face in the next thirty years as the world becomes increasingly complex but I know that I want creative, bright, resourceful people leading the way. It is essential that we fight now for all students to have the opportunity to learn so that we will have skilled leaders to guide us in the future.

How to Advocate for Funding for Public Schools

Recently I feel like I am seeing the widening of the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Last week parents in San Bruno were out on El Camino waving signs and gathering at City Hall to protest cuts to education. I called my friend in Palo Alto to ask if she was going out to protest and she didn’t know what I was talking about. Then I called a friend in Burlingame to see if she was going out. She didn’t know what I was talking about either. I thought since the budget cuts are going to be statewide it would affect all districts equally but apparently it doesn’t.

I was at the California Association for the Gifted Conference in Sacramento this weekend and I purposefully attended two workshops with a woman named Teri Burns. She is the Director of Legislative Advocacy at School Innovations and Advocacy. I wanted to understand what is going on with the California budget and I wanted to understand what the vehicles are for effective action.

Ms. Burns explained that there are statewide cuts of about $225 per student in the new budget but the cuts come from a pot of flexible-spending money. Districts can choose how they want to cover that shortfall. Many districts are in danger of losing their GATE programs. San Bruno wants to lay off teachers, eliminate class size reduction, close our school library, eliminate PE, and eliminate art. It was eye opening to realize that we don’t have to eliminate class size reduction. Yes, we only have so much money to spend but there has not been a statewide declaration that class size reduction will end now. It is our district’s choice.

To be fair, Ms. Burns pointed out that the Governor still owes the schools money from 2005 so for years now the school districts have been cutting back and cutting back and for some, there is nothing left to cut. Some districts like Palo Alto and Burlingame raise a lot of money from their community education funds. I surmise that they must be planning to reroute some of this money to cover the budget shortfall and thus continue with class-size reduction and many of their other programs like PE, music, and library. My friend in Palo Alto was asked to give $700 this year to the community education fund. In San Bruno we were asked to give $100. That leaves the communities with very different amounts of money to use in situations like this.

The schools are owed $11.2 billion dollars in outstanding Prop 98 balances from 2005-2006 to 2008-2009. The Governor would like to continue to ignore the repayment schedule for this money by deferring the first year obligation until 2012-2013. This will actually require a change in existing law and this is where parents and teachers need to come in. We need to let our legislators know that we do not support changing the law. This is the worst economic time for our schools in a long time. Schools have kept up their end of the bargain with the Governor and it is now time for him to pay up.

Ms. Burns closed her session by saying that people involved in education are often fair and accommodating. This, however, is not getting us very far on the political scene. She said we should have “righteous indignation” about the fact that our schools have not been paid. She gave a valuable lesson about how to get one’s voice heard and advocate for our schools. I want to share her information with all parents in the area so that we can effectively let the legislators know how we feel about this subject and hopefully make the voice of education louder so that when it comes down to a vote, schools get their due. Please come to a workshop Thursday, April 8 at 6:30 PM at the Franco Real Estate Group Offices at San Bruno Towne Center, 1230-A El Camino Real, San Bruno. We need to come together and work to close the gap.

__________________________________________________
For up to date information on education issues, visit http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/main.aspx Click on “subject areas” and then click on K-12 education. This website is maintained by the legislative analyst’s office and is meant and is meant to help lawmakers stay up to date on current issues. The general public can use it to stay informed as well.