Perhaps the saddest commentary on education reform is the anomaly that it’s not OK to be smart.
Parents of the country’s 3 million gifted children wonder at the irony of an education system that races to get the top, but neglects the kids already there.
An unintended legacy of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act is that it punished students already ahead. Federal mandates to help students reach proficiency caused many schools to pull resources away from gifted learners, says the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC).
“Our nation has fostered a troublesome underinvestment in the very student population most likely to be its next generation of innovators, discoverers, and pioneers,” wrote NAGC President Ann Robinson.
In regular classrooms without resources or attention, gifted children’s scores suffer: While low performing students made rapid gains over the last decade, performance of students in the top 10 percent remained largely flat, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Somehow, we’ve warped the concept of educational equality. We advocate that all children deserve to reach a minimum level of proficiency. We need to rephrase that thinking: What all children deserve is a chance to learn something new every day — regardless of where they start.
It’s the dynamic process of learning that makes us successful, rather than the facts we memorize. To learn, the brain must be stimulated to create a network of connections like branches on a tree, research shows. When they’re not stimulated, the brain actually prunes these connections away.
Left unchallenged, gifted children can regress and lose their intellectual abilities. A shocking 20 percent of the country’s high school dropouts are gifted.
Gifted children from lower income backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to regression: Only 56 percent of these students were still high achievers in reading by the time they reached fifth grade, says a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation report.
In response, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado co-sponsored an Equity in Excellence bill in June to establish national grants to identify and serve high-potential students — especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. A similar bill is before the U.S. Senate.
The legislation could benefit all gifted students, often misidentified in regular classrooms. Gifted children tend to dig deeper, ask more questions and find out-of-the-box answers. It’s the kind of creative thinking we need to solve global issues — but not the kind of thinking that’s rewarded on standardized tests.
Many gifted students are also keenly aware they are different. As a defense, they mask their abilities in order to fit in with peers. This often results in lost confidence, depression, and underachievement — making identification even more difficult.
In Douglas County, the Discovery Program (which my two children attend) is a full-time, self-contained program for gifted kids. Despite advanced academics, many parents say the greatest value of the program is the social benefit of having real peers — and a chance to belong.
Out of place in regular classrooms, gifted children are truly special needs students. Historically, they’ve actually been identified by the same criteria as many low performing students — having an IQ at least one standard deviation apart from same-age peers.
Special education services for lower performing children are mandated and funded by federal and state laws. In contrast, we spend just two cents of every $100 in education funding on gifted children, says the NAGC.
That leaves gifted education to the states, which are wildly inconsistent in their policies and funding. Over 25 percent of the states provide no gifted funding at all, says the NAGC.
At first glance, Colorado seems to do a better job than most states in educating its 56,000 gifted students. But Colorado requires services only “to the extent that funds are provided,” says the state’s Exceptional Children’s Educational Act.
Discovery parents at Northridge Elementary School in Highlands Ranch had to purchase their own science kits to enable sixth-graders to learn up to a middle school level.
The inequity in state funding for special needs students is enormous. Colorado spent 34 times as much on special education students as it did on gifted students in 2008-2009. The state spent $8.2 million on gifted education — compared to $20 million on English language learners and a colossal $278.2 million on special education, says the Colorado Department of Education.
The myth that gifted students “will do just fine” without special services puts these children at risk academically, socially and emotionally.
Gifted students need to know we value their differences and take pride in their intellect. They need advanced learning, teachers who support their unique needs and peers who relate in similar ways.
They need to know it’s OK to be smart.
Lisa Wirthman has covered business, politics and travel for publications such as USA Today, U.S. News & World Report and Investor’s Business Daily. She lives in Highlands Ranch.
