Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
MOUNTAIN GROVE, Mo. — Before her second birthday, Audrey Walker recognized sequences of five colors. When she was 6, her father, Michael, overheard her telling a little boy: "No, no, no, Hunter, you don't understand. What you were seeing was a flashback."
At school, Audrey quickly grew bored as the teacher drilled letters and syllables until her classmates caught on. She flourished, instead, in a once-a-week class for gifted and talented children where she could learn as fast as her nimble brain could take her.
But in September, Mountain Grove, a remote rural community in the Ozarks where nearly three in four students live in poverty, eliminated all of its programs for the district's 50 or so gifted children like Audrey, who is 8 now. Struggling with shrinking revenues and new federal mandates that focus on improving the test scores of the lowest-achieving pupils, Mountain Grove and many other school districts across the country have turned to cutting programs for their most promising students.
"Rural districts like us, we've been literally bleeding to death," said Gary Tyrrell, assistant superintendent of the Mountain Grove School District, which has 1,550 students. The formula for cutting back in hard times was straightforward, if painful, Mr. Tyrrell said: Satisfy federal and state requirements first. Then, "Do as much as we can for the majority and work on down."
Under that kind of a formula, programs for gifted and talented children have become especially vulnerable.
Posted by P6 at March 2, 2004 07:09 AM
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Comments
A lot of people think that programs for gifted children can be cut because the children will do OK in regular classes. This isn't true. It essentially says that the children should be responsible for teaching themselves.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at March 2, 2004 02:17 PMKnowledge is wealth. Wealth generation and creation is what Boosh trumpets. Where is the funding, the vision, the personification of principle?
To settle for less than the best for every student a priori is to disservice the spirit of learning. Wisdom escapes this tenure, and setting someone back developmentally is the worst thing that could be done. The cost-benefits analysis is nonexistent for worst case or minimal scenarios in this.
These effects will go on long after Bush 43. Then when you consider the NCLB grading method which punishes the best students by penalizing them when others do poorly, the downward cycle snowballs to an avalanche.
The only silver lining to this brewing storm is that it could perhaps last long enough to show such should never be done again.
The only silver lining to this brewing storm is that it could perhaps last long enough to show such should never be done again.
That would be an acceptable end.
Posted by P6 at March 3, 2004 04:33 AM