"Less funding for gifted students"
Mike
Dorie Turner ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA | When Liz Fitzgerald realized her son and daughter were
forced to read books in math class while the other children caught up,
she had them moved into gifted classes at their suburban Atlanta
elementary school.
Just 100 miles down the road in Taliaferro County, that wouldn't have
been an option. All the gifted classes were canceled because of budget
cuts.
"If they didn't have it, they would get bored and distracted easily,"
said Mrs. Fitzgerald, whose children are 14 and 12. "It just wouldn't
be challenging."
Such disparities exist in every state, according to a new report by
the National Association for Gifted Children that blames low federal
funding and a focus on low-performing students.
The report, "State of the States in Gifted Education," hits at a basic
element of the federal government's focus on education: Most of its
money and effort goes into helping low-performing, poor and minority
kids achieve basic proficiency. It largely ignores the idea of helping
gifted kids reach their highest potential, leaving those tasks to
states and local school districts.
"In the age of Sputnik, we put money into math and science, and we
ended up on the moon," said Del Siegle, a University of Connecticut
researcher who wrote the report. "We really need to consider that
again. We cannot afford as a country to ignore talent."
The federal government spent just $7.5 million last year on research
and grants for the estimated 3 million gifted children in the U.S.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have tried to eliminate that
money entirely, but Congress put it back into the budget each year.
Gifted programs are typically paid for by local districts or states
and vary dramatically. In some states, it's as stark as one county
with multiple gifted programs - magnet schools, honors courses and
separate classrooms for advanced learners - next to a county with
nothing.
"The quality of gifted services is dependent on geography, and it
shouldn't be," said Laura Carriere, president of the Maryland
Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education and the mother of two
gifted children.
Just six states pick up the whole tab for gifted programs, and 13
don't put a single dollar toward such curriculum, according to the
study. That means poor urban and rural school systems often have no
money left for their highest achievers, according to the Nov. 12
report.
"There is a markedly insufficient national commitment to gifted and
talented children, which, if left unchecked, will ultimately leave our
nation ill-prepared to field the next generation of innovators and to
compete in the global economy."
For Bellevue, Wash., mother Julie Plaut Warwick, a gifted program was
the only option for her now 16-year-old son, who is in a magnet high
school in the Seattle suburb.
"He would be very bored and would have gotten in trouble," she said.
"If you're in a regular classroom, and you repeat things two or three
times, he gets incredibly bored and frustrated."
The federal No Child Left Behind Law, which was passed in 2003, forced
states to focus on bringing struggling children up to grade level -
inadvertently exaggerating the problem even more, Mr. Siegle said. A
Fordham Institute study released last month showed gifted students are
still improving their standardized test scores, but not as quickly as
low-performing children.
As the economy has tanked, some states are shifting money away from
gifted programs to help balance their budgets. The report shows that
13 states - more than half of the 23 that actually fund gifted
education - made such cuts in 2008-09.