Keller regional gifted center er photo of the our classrooms al below are some faqs to help you decide if montessori gifted prep mgp is right for your child. To test into some of Chicago's top schools, incoming kindergartners must be able to do more than just count to 10 or rattle off the alphabet. They could be asked to identify trapezoids, figure out how many cookies they'd have if Mom put two more on their plate, demonstrate advanced literacy skills and, for gifted programs, be able to infer relationships, recognize patterns and predict what.
Let’s Talk Gifted Programs
November 21, 2011 at 2:38 pm94 comments
I got 2 emails today about gifted stuff and it might be fun to discuss something different for a while. The Union debate makes me sad. The Charter debate makes my head hurt. How about gifted kids?!
I got this email today. It’s always fun for other parents going through this to hear what other people experience. Any thoughts on this?
“My daughter took the 4 year old test last Friday. When we arrived there were about 6 other children. The testers came in to retrieve the children about 1 minute apart and early. One particular tester said, “We’ll be back in 10 or 15 minutes.” Sure enough, she was back with the child in 10 minutes. In fact the 5 other children taken into the test were ALL back within 15 minutes. My daughter; however, was in there for a little over 50 minutes. I am completely freaked out by this. She is bright. Has been reading since she was 3.5 years old, knows her numbers to 100, etc. She pretty much does all of this on her own, just loves to learn. My husband and I are both people who stressed our whole life about the need for a perfect GPA and take fun approach to learning with her. So we did not do test prep or any of that stuff.
Do you have any thoughts or experience with this? Is it super weird that all of these kids were testing in 15 minutes and took my daughter 50? I am dying to know what when on in that room, but all my daughter will say is…”most of it was easy, there were 3 money questions that were hard and I did not understand the sentence about the blocks.” (Which she later told me she was instructed to read the sentence to herself, but she read them out loud.) Whatever that means.”
I’ll put my response in the Comments section.
I also got a link to this article in the Sun Times about the decrease in Gifted spots in the city, due to the phasing out of the South Loop Regional Gifted Center to make more room in the school for neighborhood kids.
Actually, I’m unclear whether this is an “article” or an opinion piece. It was written by ESTHER CEPEDA eejaycee@600words.com. I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts….
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I have a master’s degree in special education, but when I rack my brain, I can recall only one or two class sessions, tops, during my teacher training that were devoted to gifted students. And through hundreds of hours of classroom observations, I never once got to sit in on a class for gifted students.
This isn’t a surprise. Public schools are not set up to support or enrich gifted students, who often come across as bored and listless or energetic troublemakers, because they’re not being challenged.
The fact is that gifted students — defined by federal law as “youth who give evidence of high achievement capability . . . and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities” — are routinely ignored in public education.
Schools have forever been challenged by budget constraints, too few high-performing educators who have the necessary specialized training, and plenty of students with high needs that keep them from achieving even average grades.
But most significant was the enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which took the wind out of the sails of gifted programs by forcing schools to put a greater focus on the achievements of their lowest performers.
According to a National Association for Gifted Children’s report released last week, gifted students are being held back by inadequate teacher preparation and professional development, little public accountability and inconsistent access to services.
“The nation’s infrastructure to serve our high-ability and high-potential students is in disrepair and in urgent need of attention,” said NAGC President Paula Olszweski-Kubilius, a professor of education at Northwestern University. “Unless the nation redoubles its effort to identify and serve our high-potential and high-ability students, we will fail to ensure our future competitiveness, security and prosperity.”
Just days after that report was released, the Chicago Public Schools announced that South Loop Elementary School will be cutting its entire gifted program.
The reason is a classic case of overcrowding. The school’s main building has too many students and no space in which to expand.
“Today I announce that we will [be] permanently phasing out the South Loop School Regional Gifted Center program. Thus, over an eight-year period, we will see a reduction in this source of enrollment pressure of approximately 28 students per year [one classroom] for a total reduction of 224 students [nine classrooms],” wrote principal Tara Shelton in a letter to parents.
Talented And Gifted Programs
What a terrible shame that the brightest students are considered a “source of enrollment pressure.”
But I’m not here to knock Ms. Shelton; this isn’t just a CPS issue. Illinois, in general, doesn’t value its most gifted students, a failure that trickles down.
Chicago Public Schools Gifted Programs Testing Mom 2017
According to NAGC, Illinois doesn’t know how many gifted students it has because, like many other states, it doesn’t bother to count them. And it doesn’t count them because, in part, the state is not accountable for their education. Illinois spends zero dollars on Gifted and Talented education.
We have no guidelines for identifying gifted students, don’t require teachers to have any training on how to instruct them, and don’t permit gifted students to get around our lack of programs by, for example, allowing grade school students to enroll in high school classes or allowing high schoolers to enroll in college courses.
What a phenomenally ridiculous waste.
And now we say farewell to South Loop’s gifted students. Tragically, we hardly knew ye.
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Entry filed under: Gifted kids.