LCPS Gifted Programs

There is an interesting conversation about Gifted programs in LCPS over on Loudoun Schools Feedback. This is a blog that I read regularly for a critical parent's view of the system. I'm not going to respond directly to the points made on that blog because I don't want to undercut those views and because I'm not the LCPS PR department. I do want to add my thoughts to the blogosphere though.

First, for more information about our Gifted programs, see the Gifted Programs page on the LCPS website. You might be particularly interested in the Gifted Programs FAQ. Second, if this is an area that really concerns you, please get involved with the Gifted Advisory Committee, which meets next on November 15th.

LCPS and all other districts are required to issue a local plan for the gifted to the state every five years, and our report was issued just this past June. The Gifted Advisory Committee worked together on the report, which is on the LCPS website as Proposed Local Plan for the Education of the Gifted. When this plan was put forward I needed extra time to read and understand it, and it was held from the board agenda until I was able to sit down with Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Services Sharon Ackerman, Director of Curriculum and Instruction Peter Hughes and Gifted Program Supervisor Julie Kelly. We talked for over an hour about the LCPS approach to gifted programs.

I think that they are the best folks to represent to you what the program philosophy and execution is, so I refer you again to the LCPS website and the Gifted Advisory Committee if you want to learn more. For my part, I am satisfied that this is an area of considerable emphasis for LCPS and that at the administrative level we have the best people available working with the best available knowledge on the subject. As with many areas, other school districts come here to learn how to run a successful gifted program.

One note of interest is that our programs are different than in Fairfax County Public Schools, where kids are labled "Gifted & Talented" and then pulled into separate classrooms from their peers. I have friends with "GT" kids in the Fairfax system who find this to be a problem for a number of reasons. One is that gifted kids are not gifted in all areas. Another, that a kid who shows gifts at one age may have gotten ahead of peers who may well catch up in a few years. Most importantly, isolating kids as gifted apart from their peers in Fairfax has a tendency to create enormous pressure to get into Thomas Jefferson HS among that group, and no encouragement among students who aren't in it. Finally, the whole concept of separating these kids almost entirely from their peers is just elitist.

LCPS is also developing programs for kids who are "Twice Exceptional," meaning that while in one area they are gifted, in another they need special education services. This is leading-edge in public schools, and illustrates directly the incredible complexity surrounding kids' intellectual abilities.

One final note, especially for those of you who champion the SOLs and NCLB standardized testing. When every kid must pass the same test at the end of the year, every teacher must teach from the same text and our schools are judged entirely on how many kids pass and not on how many kids excel, the emphasis will be on the bottom line and not on the leading edge. This was the design of NCLB... to not allow schools to ignore the kids who are struggling while trumpeting the kids who are soaring by basing evaluations entirely on the kids who are struggling. I think there is plenty of room to argue in favor of this approach, but there is no room to deny that it is a shift in our emphasis in which some kids will win and some will lose.

So as you think and talk about Gifted programs in LCPS remember that this is a complex issue, that our folks are doing their very best for every child, and that there is an opportunity for you to get involved and make it better.