{"id":1878,"date":"2007-10-24T10:48:30","date_gmt":"2007-10-24T10:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/10\/24\/gifted-is-not-a-special-need\/"},"modified":"2007-10-24T10:48:30","modified_gmt":"2007-10-24T10:48:30","slug":"gifted-is-not-a-special-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/10\/24\/gifted-is-not-a-special-need\/","title":{"rendered":"“Gifted” is not a “Special Need”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Kleiman has rediscovered a semi-clever approach to the problems of smart kids<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So here’s the puzzle: is there any justification for not treating high-IQ kids as having “special needs” and therefore entitled to individualized instruction? Yes, yes, I know that in the South “gifted” programs have been used as a technique of within-school resegregation. But that doesn’t change the real needs of very bright kids. <\/p>\n

I don’t know how the special-ed laws are written. Is there a potential lawsuit here?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I say “rediscovered,” because I’ve heard this proposed and rejected a dozen times in education-related bull sessions. I don’t know whether there’s any formal history of people actually attempting this as a way to fund “gifted” education, but I doubt it.<\/p>\n

This is, in many ways, an absolutely terrible idea. “Gifted” and “Special Needs” are two extremely different categories, and the casual suggestion of diverting resources from the latter to educate the former is an insult to the very real needs of many “Special Needs” students.<\/p>\n

\"i-bc34b702798f01b10409f7481ac9dc21-link_donorschoose_small.gif\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The background here is that, as Mark notes, that there are generally more resources provided for the education of students with what are euphemistically termed “special needs” than for “gifted” students. This is, in the end, a matter of law: programs for “special needs” children are mandated by law, and “gifted” programs are not, and that means that when money gets tight in the public schools– and money is always tight in the public schools– “gifted” programs get the axe, simply because they can<\/strong> be cut.<\/p>\n

(I have personal experience of this. I went through the public school system in my hometown, and they had a good “gifted” program for something like five or six years in the late 80’s\/ early 90’s– my father was in charge of it. It was instituted because parents asked for it, and it went away because the district couldn’t afford it any more. At around the same time, they also resorted to cost-cutting measures like cancelling all class trips to save on buses and insurance, and so on. It wasn’t a real good time, educationally speaking.)<\/p>\n

This is a rotten situation, to be sure, and I would love to see some legislation put in place to mandate and fund programs for “gifted” students. In the absence of that, though, this sort of legal end run around the problem is a terrible idea, that will only accelerate the decay of the school system for “normal” kids, and strain the resources intended for “special needs” students who really need that extra attention.<\/p>\n

We already have plenty of examples of parents whose children are at the low end of the normal range making strenuous arguments to have their kids classified as “special needs” in order to get individual attention, which is perverse enough. Adding the “gifted” kids to that is only going to make the problem worse.<\/p>\n

And that’s even before you think about what message you send by grouping “gifted” kids with the developmentally disabled. We have enough problems with kids not wanting to be “too smart” as it is– how many of them are going to think the extra educational support is worth the added social stigma?<\/p>\n

The right way to deal with the problem here is to deal with the actual problem: public schools do not have adequate funding to provide appropriate programs for both “gifted” and “special needs” children. A real fix for that problem will involve spending more money on education– any attempt at a temporary fix by reclassifying smart kids is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Kleiman has rediscovered a semi-clever approach to the problems of smart kids: So here’s the puzzle: is there any justification for not treating high-IQ kids as having “special needs” and therefore entitled to individualized instruction? Yes, yes, I know that in the South “gifted” programs have been used as a technique of within-school resegregation.… Continue reading “Gifted” is not a “Special Need”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}