Geniuses vs. No Child Left Behind
[Our] education system has little idea how to cultivate its most promising students. Since well before the Bush Administration began using the impossibly sunny term “no child left behind,” those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs. But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids–about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range. Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians. Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds….To some extent, complacency is built into the system. American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can’t make sense to spend 10 times as much to try to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential.From Time Magazine
I agree with this article in that a lacking part in America’s school system is the less than adequate number of programs dedicated to gifted students. I see the effects of diminishing the number of gifted programs and it’s not a great outcome.
From second grade through eleventh grade, I was placed in accelerated mathematics. In elementary school, that basically meant I was learning a grade higher than the average students in my grade. In middle school, that meant I was learning two years higher than average students. In high school, that meant I was actually able to take the AP Calculus with okay ease. Unfortunately, this program has been canceled for a few years throughout my school district. I was the second-to-last class that was able to go through this program and I am very grateful.
I feel truly sorry for the students who would have been great in the mathematics program, but since it’s canceled, they have to be in the same classes as everyone else. I have been in classes where everyone in the school was mixed together and the learning experiences in those rooms are not great, to say the least.
I remember in ninth grade biology class, the students would spend more time trying to throw paper balls into someone’s shirt than paying attention to the teacher. The teacher, after seeing this, would not teach until everyone would pay attention. In the end, every class would have five minutes of actual lecture and the rest spent to waiting for everyone to settle down.
I was extremely happy when junior year came and due to my selection of mainly AP courses, I was placed in classroom settings with other students who would also care for their grades. This allowed everyone to learn at a much more rapid pace and it would keep the students challenged.
On the other end, I don’t exactly like how there is a school created for elites. I find that this might promote a more anti-social environment for the students: those students would think that they are better than everyone else because they went to a “smart school.” And in life, one of the most important virtues is modesty. I don’t know how the students will be when they are out of school.
I know that measures have to be taken to pull up the less privileged students throughout the nation. But if we are helping these students at the expense of the bright students, I do not find this to be a solution, but just another problem.
As a sidenote: I loved Math Blaster when I was kid. Maybe that’s a reason why I was good at math. Those were the only types of games my parents agreed to get me–the actual educational games where you have to write in sentences (to better your English) or solve math equations (to better your math). It helped me finish questions faster because in the game, you’re given a time limit. If you don’t solve the equation in a certain time period, you get a bad score. As a kid, bad scores are really bad.
2 Responses to “Geniuses vs. No Child Left Behind”
August 17, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Yeah, what you wrote about the elite school is all true. I guess an elite school wouldn’t be so bad, but I think this school has to be started earlier on. It seems that most of these students are middle school students and by that age, they would have been nurtured to think that they were over the top smart (and in a way they are, but they have to remember that there is always someone out there that’s better in something). From the passage, a lot of the students seem to have been moved around a lot because they didn’t fit in. The parents can’t lie–they would most likely say it’s because their child is so smart, which could induce a superior attitude. (I might also be a bit prejudiced when I write this because I checked out the website and I wouldn’t have gotten into the school…haha. My verbal skills in middle school were less than great when compared on a national spectrum. On the other hand, I know people who would’ve gotten into the school, but they don’t seem to be socially in-ept at all in their current schools.)
I played Cluefinders, too! I can’t believe I forgot about all that (the Egyptian one). I played it too many times. Carmen Sandiago and Oregon Trail were other games my parents eventually decided to get my sister and me on our birthdays.
August 17, 2007 at 9:48 pm
It’s true that it’s frustrating sometimes to be unable to get ahead- I remember I was irritated when I couldn’t take Algebra in 7th grade because there weren’t enough people for the class, and when in junior year I was upset I couldn’t take AP Calc I like a few of my classmates because I moved into the school district too late. But in the end, I guess you can only take the hardest courses you can and do your best. Hopefully you’ll be in a challenging school district- if not, maybe you can just settle for being valedictorian. =D
But I don’t begrudge the fact that there are elite schools; I think that just makes for a challenge. I am, admittedly, an elitist by nature, so I can see where they’re coming from. It’s just that there will always be arrogant people, and they can be annoying, but you know what’s worse? People who are arrogant without reason. So if people are good enough to get into a ’smart people’ school, that means either one of three things: 1) they deserve it, 2) they have connections, or, though this doesn’t happen often, 3) they’re lucky. If it’s 1, and it oftentimes is, then they deserve a bit of respect. Of course, they have the responsibility then of using their potential, and the world will hold them to that, so it’s not all fun and games. And anyways, smart people do learn modesty in those schools, because much of the time they go from being top 1% of their high school to middle of the pack in college. That’s humbling.
Finally (ahhhh I wrote a short essay), I used to play those educational games too. Haha- my first CD was The Children’s Encyclopedia, then I think I got Math Blaster too. Number Muncher, Cluefinders, JumpStart…I had a lot. I still like to play them sometimes- ha.