Gifted education outrages

[This is my column for the Local Living section of Jan. 7, 2010]



My Dec. 10 column about that troublesome Washington area gifted child, future billionaire Warren Buffett, said our schools are never going to help such kids much. I said the gifted designation was often arbitrary and should be disposed of. Instead, we ought to find ways to let all kids explore their talents.

This produced a flood of comments on my blog. Many readers thought I was callous and daft. “Unfortunately, eliminating the label generally means that the schools give up doing anything for advanced learners,” wrote a reader signing in as EduCrazy. Another commenter, CrimsonWife, said “if educators are fine with giving special attention and services to kids who are far out of the mainstream on the low end of the spectrum, why is it so controversial to provide specialized services to kids who are far out of the mainstream on the high end?”

But some wondered if there might be promising alternatives. “When schools fail to challenge our most capable learners, what they learn is that effort is not required,” said mom22. “Unless, of course, some adult gives them the chance to do things differently, and to focus on something fascinating. My kids have found these things often in school, but out of their classroom.” I wonder if she realizes the consequences of such an approach, taken to its logical extremes.

Take, for instance, Quaker Valley High School in Leetsdale, Penn., a Pittsburgh suburb. Linda Conlon, an academic specialist there, explained to me what they are doing. If you are easily shocked, please stop reading. I have checked Conlon out. She is telling the truth. Her school is like many in the Washington area, mostly middle class kids. But Quaker Valley lets them get away with stuff that flouts well-established educational rules and procedures.

One Quaker Valley student realized the established sequence of math courses barred her from taking calculus before graduation. She felt she needed that course to look good to colleges and prepare for advanced science, since she wanted to be a doctor. She asked to take trigonometry on her own over the summer, just her and the school textbook and maybe a tutor. Yeah, right, I said. But the Quaker Valley math department said yes. She passed the trig exam without taking the course, eventually took calculus, got the college she wanted and is now in med school.

It gets worse. While giving the PSAT to all ninth and tenth graders (another wild move), Quaker Valley counselors found one student with mediocre grades but high scores. His math teacher said he did well on class exams but never did his homework. I know some students like this in our best suburban high schools. They and their parents are lectured on the need to accept responsibility and do their assignments. No room for lazy geniuses in their school. At Quaker Valley, they just gave in. The teacher told the kid homework was his choice. There would be no penalty if he didn’t do it. His grades and his attitude toward school improved remarkably.

There’s more. They let a gifted musician take both an instrumental class and a choral music class that met at the same hour. The student chose which to attend on any given day, and rehearsed the major performance pieces on her own.

Many students took AP online or enrolled at local colleges if Quaker Valley couldn’t schedule them into that subject. When students complained about having to choose between AP physics, too tough for them, or regular physics, too boring--a complaint I hear often from Fairfax County---the Quaker Valley staff said they could skip regular physics classes that were too slow for them, as long as they spent that class time doing something productive in the library and did well on their quizzes, tests and labs.

Are they kidding? What kind of high school would let kids behave like that? One possible answer: the kind of high school many of the Washington area parents who wrote me would like their children to attend.

Read Jay's blog every day at http://washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.

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