In the News

A couple of news stories that caught my attention.

Obama named his nominee for Secretary of Education.

I don't have an opinion at this point. Until recently the Secretary of Education job was a thankless job that didn't seem to have a real impact on education. If you think about it, was it the Secretary of Education that played a major role in Brown v. Board of Ed? IDEA? It seems to me that until No Child Left Behind (NCLB) no one really knew what the Education Secretary actually did. Now the cabinet position is more important than ever. We'll have to see what Arne Duncan will do in his position.

A district in Maryland is getting rid of the "Gifted" label.

All I have to say is unless you have a school for the gifted, the percentage of your student body that is gifted should reflect society, about 2%. That's it. A school with 36% gifted students is either too lenient in their criteria or there's something in the water. I need to move to Montgomery County if there's a good chance of creating a gifted child just by living there. Regardless, people want their children to be in gifted programs, but not all are created equal. I would look to see what kind of enrichment these programs had to offer. Is it something I could replicate on my own? Like special education, sometimes the label doesn't matter, the level of service does.

BBC

TAG, You're Not It (Again)

I swear I'm not recycling blog titles, it's just that the last two were appropriate for the subject. I've come to dislike IQ testing for Talented and Gifted (TAG) eligibility. At first I relished it as an opportunity to give some of the brightest students in my school the chance to receive an enriched educational experience. What has happened is that I've actually made pre-teens cry in my office during IQ tests. I figured out what it is. All of the students that I have tested have been smart enough to know what they don't know. It's one thing to be completely ignorant and think you're acing a test when in fact you're bombing it miserably. It's another to know when you are bombing it. This can affect performance, especially for a student who thinks that he or she is smart and now feels stupid because of what he or she doesn't know. It's difficult seeing the anguish on their faces. I try to be reassuring and tell them that they are doing well, but they're probably thinking, "Bull, I know I suck." I think what's worse for me is that I see how smart they are, but they don't qualify as gifted. That's what sucks. I don't want them to feel like failures, because they are far from it. But who knows what messages they tell themselves when they aren't accepted into the TAG program. I know that teacher recommendations are important, but I'm kidding myself if I think that the program is lenient when it comes to the IQ cutoff score which I believe is 130 in my district. If my district is strict about that number then the 2 students I tested this week aren't getting in.