Gifted Discontent

Today's Washington Post includes a letter from a Loudoun County parent who isn't happy with the gifted programs that LCPS offers.

The gifted program in Loudoun County is an attempt at appeasement. The system officials do not want the parents of the bulk of the students pointing at the gifted program and screaming elitist nor do they want to try to justify large expenditures for a segment of the community.

Jay Mathews, the Post's resident education guru, calls the letter "an apt summary of the strains and stumbles that surround this issue:"

You put your finger precisely on the problem that gifted programs have throughout the country. Public school systems rarely have the expertise or the money to reproduce the kind of program you had as a child, and the number of students like you and your daughter who are ready for it is so small that it is hard to justify to taxpayers.

I wrote about the gifted programs in October as part of a back and forth with Loudoun's blogging gifted program critic, Elise at Loudoun Schools Feedback. She also talks about the Post article today in her blog, I give her credit for getting to it first this morning. Her assessment below:

This parent and teacher perspective, in our opinion, is absolutely accurate. And, while tepid and unimaginative, Jay's response is also absolutely accurate...a tremendous amount of potential will be added to Virginia's vast pool of the untapped.

To see my overall assessment of LCPS gifted programs, see my LCPS Gifted Programs post.

As with so many things, parents who feel impacted need to take ownership and take action. If you have the answers, you have a responsibility to get involved and share them with the rest of us.

• Take advantage of the resources made available on the LCPS Gifted and Talented Program webpage.
  
• Download and read the LCPS Local Plan for the Education of the Gifted.
• Talk to your LCPS School Board member about the changes you want.
• Attend meetings of the Gifted Advisory Committee (next meeting: Jan 10th, 7:00p)
  
• Speak during the public comment sessions of the school board meetings (2nd & 4th Tuesdays, 6:3opm)
• Find out if your Parent-Teacher organization offers after-school programs, and if so offer to teach a class for gifted students

The LCPS parent who wrote the letter refers to "system officials" as the cause of the problem. I'm certainly one of those "system officials," but more than that I'm just a dad and a neighbor who just goes to a lot of meetings. So are every other one of the "system officials." My interest isn't in appeasing, it's in trying to do the very best for every child in our community. We only have the funds to spend that the taxpayers give us, we only have the hours in the day that nature gives us, and so there is always opportunity for improvement. When Elise refers to "Virginia's vast pool of the untapped", I think of the many parents with the expertise and perspective and hours to give and I wonder how to tap into that.

US News Rankings

The Washington Post reports today on US News' ranking of America's Best High Schools, including the #1 ranking of Fairfax's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I have a couple of bones to pick with this study, and not just because Loudoun's schools are not included in the list.

First gripe: The only way that it is possible to rank High Schools nationally is by relying on test scores, which are helpful tools to evaluate but when used for rankings in this way they become the only criteria that people use to judge the schools. Rankings such as these motivate communities to push test scores above all else, constricting efforts to transform our schools into models for 21st century flexible learning.

Second gripe: TJ and other magnet high schools should not be ranked. Consider this quote:

"Public high schools have a mission to educate a range of students. It's not enough to just focus on the best kids or to just focus on remediation for the worst kids. You have to do both," said Brian Kelly, editor of U.S. News. "This methodology is set up to allow a fair comparison of that."

Pardon me for saying so, but Brian Kelly needs to wake up and smell what he's shoveling. TJ, while a great school doing a great job, doesn't do "remediation for the worst kids." TJ selects the most academically gifted students out of nearly a half million of the most affluent high school students in one of the most educated metropolitan areas in the entire world. The TJ administration could let those kids watch Cartoon Network all day, they'd still have high test scores.

US News needs to take this week's issue, put it in the trash, and start over again.

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.

Science Commencements

During the past week I attended two graduations for Loudoun students specializing in science studies. First was our own Loudoun Academy of Science, and then on Saturday was Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. These students deserve special recognition because their high school experience involves travel to a school away from the rest of their friends. They are rewarded for their extensive commute times with exceptional homework loads and extremely high expectations.

They are among the most academically gifted of our community, a gift one cannot choose. But they do choose to work very hard, to explore, to achieve at great cost to their time with family and friends. Loudoun does a great service to these students by giving them exceptional opportunities in conjunction with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Fairfax County schools. (HHMI sponsors lunches with scientists, including Nobel laureates. Fairfax County owns TJ and permits a limited number of Loudoun students to attend each year). This exceptional opportunity ensures that their curiosity, passion and talents are primed for success at our best universities.

You can find a story about the Academy of Science graduation here, including a list of graduates.

TJ Grads included:

• Stephen Ammann
• Winn Chen
• Elias Clizbe
• Anne Cotter
• Scott Fernandez
• Boris Kiseley
• Kimberley Lauder
• Lisa Meintel
• Ashabari Nayak
• Sarah Pak
• Francisco Pareja-Lecaros
• Anastasia Rumiantsev
• Yan Song
• Brian Stoepker
• Nathaniel Stoltz