March 08, 2008

Denver public school system dumbs down "highly gifted" program to be more "equitable" (ACLU)

Jeremy Meyer of the Denver Post offers 'Minorities, poor get "highly gifted" lift/A new DPS system awards some kids an extra boost to make things more equitable', but don't worry it's even worse than it sounds:

...To determine who gets into [their "highly gifted" program], the [Denver Public School district] previously relied on oral tests that measure a student's reasoning and IQ.

To make things more equitable, the district now relies on a sum of measures to determine eligibility into the highly gifted program — cognitive tests, annual assessments, reading tests and teacher nominations. Next year, the district will consider artwork and writings.

Also, students get extra points toward entry into the program if English is their second language or if they receive federal meal benefits — a measure of poverty.

For example, a student who scores as low as the 75th percentile on cognitive tests could be considered, [Diana Howard, principal at Polaris at Ebert, the district's sole elementary school for the highly gifted and talented] said. Previously, that child would not have been admitted...

"Gifted" should mean smart, not artistically talented, since those are entirely different traits and in many cases not present in the same person. Those who are able to take challenging math classes may not do that well in painting classes, and vice versa. They might end up having two different math classes: those for the students who are really gifted, and those who've just been declared "gifted" by the administrators.

And, by including subjective measures such as assessments and nominations in the mix, they're opening themselves to teachers and administrators deciding to give an "extra boost" to certain less-qualified students who hold left-leaning political views or who are of the same race as the teacher or administrator. All the other issues involving affirmative action - and its pushers like Howard and the Denver Post - apply as well.

And, as might be expected:

The American Civil Liberties Union in California last year threatened to sue the Tustin Unified School District over low numbers of Latinos and African-Americans in the district's gifted programs.

Then, we find out that one of DPS's officials needs to go back to math class and learn that school resources are not infinite:

"If there are a limited number of slots in those programs, then the wealthier student who is excluded will always feel wrongly excluded if their test scores were higher than a lower-income student or Hispanic student who was included," [Joshua Wyner, executive vice president of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation] said.

Jaime Aquino, DPS's chief academic officer, said adding more highly gifted students will not exclude others.

"Every school gets an allocation per student who is identified as gifted and talented, so they can provide them some enrichment or some differentiated services within the building," he said. "You have several magnet programs throughout the district. Many still have room. It's just whether the parents want to send their kids to those schools."

Hopefully they'll get sued either by one of the American counterparts to the ACLU or by some of those parents whose children have been excluded from the program.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at March 8, 2008 04:21 PM