You want to know the ugly truth about gifted programs? They exist for two reasons. One, to mollify busybody parents. Two, to segregate smart kids from the disruptive bottom decile (or two) of their peers, giving them the chance to study in a focused, productive environment.
We don't need G&T programs, we just have to segregate problem students from the general population. People don't want to do that, though. It seems cruel, feels like you're throwing kids away, so people resist the idea, even if what's actually best for everyone.
Long ago, when I was in highschool, we had an "alternative school" next door where they pro-actively shipped all the kids who couldn't make grades, who were disruptive, who were always in trouble, who were seriously behind on basic competencies, who had truancy issues, or who got pregnant. When a kid got sent to alternative school they just disappeared from your social circle. It was like exile, because it was its own school, not a program within a school.
It had a looser, more flexible schedule, more individual attention, more independent study programs, it even had a nascent online study course. It raised the graduation and matriculation rate of my highschool to a top 2% school. The alternative school itself did a far better job of getting its student diplomas than if those same kids had been left free range in the general population.
It hugely benefitted the 95% of students who didn't go. We didn't have violent classmates, kids who caused problems in class, kids who couldn't read, were aggressively anti-social, etc. Sure, there was still the class clown, the goofy super senior, the kids with reputations for shenanigans, but there were no destructive kids.
We don't need special schools for out top 10%, we need special schools for our bottom 10%.
Gifted and Talented, or G&T, programs have long been a perennial subject of debate, particularly in New York City, where it has bedeviled mayors for years. Some parents have already washed their hands of the whole G&T business, refusing to participate in what they view as a corrupt system of segregation. But countless others still place significant stock in the G&T designation and what it offers and are comfortable relying on cognitive testing, should it be required, to determine whether a child qualifies.
“When your intelligence is the foundation of your self-perception, failing to achieve feels like soul death,” writes Katie Arnold-Ratliff. But if the limited amount of information we have about gifted kids long-term is any indication, most lead, at best, ordinary lives of modest accomplishment. A 35-year study of 677 gifted children found that by age 50, only 12.3 percent had reached a level of “eminence,” defined as “full professors … Fortune 500 executives … judges and lawyers, leaders in biomedicine, award-winning journalists and writers.” This means 88 percent never did.
Arnold-Ratliff digs into the myth of the gifted child, and how our notions of intelligence may be inherently flawed:
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