Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Comments Re: Issues Presented by the Participants of the October 21 Rowan Class

The Current State of Gifted and Talented Education

Creativity tops the chart of Bloom's Taxonomy. Renaissance men (e.g., DaVinci, Druer) were artists and scientists. So, where's the "talented" part of the title fit in? Do we now reserve this title only for academic achievers?

Wow...twenty per cent (20%) of high school dropouts are gifted and talented. That is a significant problem that needs fixing.

A question to argue for gifted and talented education: What ability level would you like your surgeon to have?

Some people believe that "all children are gifted." I am one of them, assuming we are talking about people that do not have severe cognitive disabilities. I also believe that each person is remedial in some area(s) as well.

Modifications to No Child Left Behind in the Obama Era

One of the four pillars for change mentions "building data systems" to assess student strengths and weaknesses. As I mentioned in last week's class, my "day job" is all of a sudden seeing a surge in requests for Data-driven Decision Making trainings. This could be why.

Yes, we get it...health care, swine flu, Afghanistan, and the recession take precendence over education. Still, that is not an excuse for the lack of change taking place. Where is the "vision?"

Charter Schools

We saw that charter schools often crop up in the city districts. We also saw that charter schools in New Jersey cities tend to score below the state average yet above each of their respective city's public schools. Keep this in mind when reading news articles. Two years ago, a local newspaper ran an article about the failing scores of a local city charter school. The article could have just as easily been written about how the charter school outperformed every other city school in the district...I doubt such an article would have sold as many newspapers, though.

Separation of Church and State

Our founding fathers purposely wrote a very confusing amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Teach, don't preach. The fine line between the two has haunted our schools with over a half-century's worth of lawsuits.

Guess what Congress does before starting a session to determine what to do about the outcome of prayer-in-school lawsuits? (They say a prayer.)

Year Round Schools

In addition to fitting more students into a year round school, districts can also cut back on staff. In a case of split sessions, a teacher can work with the last periods of session one and the early periods of session two.

Catch 22: To run year round schools that extend beyond 180 days, you need millions of additional New Jersey tax dollars for salaries, utilities, etc. To raise millions of New Jersey tax dollars to extend the school year, you can not disrupt the summer tourism trade.

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