While waiting in a doctor’s office Monday, my wife showed me an article in Time that seems worth sharing (despite my decade-long annoyance with Time. It attempts to discuss the challenges the country faces in educating the brightest students:
To some extent, complacency is built into the system. American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can’t make sense to spend 10 times as much to try to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential.[...]
In a no-child-left-behind conception of public education, lifting everyone up to a minimum level is more important than allowing students to excel to their limit. It has become more important for schools to identify deficiencies than to cultivate gifts. Odd though it seems for a law written and enacted during a Republican Administration, the social impulse behind No Child Left Behind is radically egalitarian. It has forced schools to deeply subsidize the education of the least gifted, and gifted programs have suffered. The year after the President signed the law in 2002, Illinois cut $16 million from gifted education; Michigan cut funding from $5 million to $500,000. Federal spending declined from $11.3 million in 2002 to $7.6 million this year.
I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that school systems need to ensure that no child is left behind, but I also think that as implemented, that extra emphasis is coming at the cost of average and gifted students.
Growing up, I was often frustrated at having to slow way the frig down, and I did on occasion actually get in trouble for working ahead. Heck, I effectively had to retake Algebra I and Geometry since my junior high wouldn’t accept the notion I had covered that material in 6th grade in independent study.
The Time article makes a big deal about the alleged need to break down resistance to the idea of grade-skipping. I’m not so sure about that, personally for social reasons, but I’ll admit that it would be one way to improve the situation without requiring significant additional resource.
What really intrigues me about the article is the discussion surrounding the Davidson Academy, a small school focused on the upper echelon of gifted students, where it sounds like students are encouraged at their own pace, and where there seems to be tolerance for the fact that even gifted kids are better at some subjects than others.