Closing the Achievement Gap: Teaching Content
Frustrating report out of Hartford, where budget problems threaten the opening on a new Achievement First charter school. The state can’t find $2.1 million needed to open the school to 252 students in September. Has anyone in Hartford figured out the future earning power of well-educated students? The incremental tax revenue they might generate over their lives? $2.1 million is a rounding error.
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“Highly intelligent, talented students need special programs to keep them engaged and challenged. But experts say too often they aren’t even identified — especially in low-income and minority schools,” notes the Los Angeles Times.
“If you reviewed Dalton Sargent’s report cards, you’d know only half his story,” writes the Times’ Carla Rivera, who notes 80% of the gifted children in the U.S. receive no specialized instruction. “The 15-year-old Altadena junior has lousy grades in many subjects. He has blown off assignments and been dissatisfied with many of his teachers. It would be accurate to call him a problematic student. But he is also gifted.”
“There is no federal law mandating special programs for gifted children, though many educators argue that these students — whose curiosity and creativity often coexist with emotional and social problems — deserve the same status as those with special needs. Services for gifted students vary from state to state. In California, about 512,000 students are enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education program, which aims to provide specialized and accelerated instruction.”
Rivera notes there is legislation pending in the California state Senate aimed at training teachers to identify gifted students from low-income, minority and non-English speaking families, but it stalled last year after estimates found that it could cost up to $1.1 million.
Seems a palty sum for our nation’s largest state to pay.
With more than $4 billion expected to be cut from public education budgets in the coming school year, school districts across California may increase class sizes in primary grades. “Educators are loath to increase student enrollment in the youngest grades,” reports the San Diego Union-Tribune, while noting that research on the efficacy of smaller class size is inconclusive.
“Since 1996, California has nevertheless set aside huge amounts of money – nearly $2 billion for the current school year – to limit class sizes to 20 students in kindergarten through third grade. Those are the crucial early years of schooling, when children acquire reading and math skills that determine their success later,” says the U-T.
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