No+Child+Pushed+Forward+ Leaving+Gifted+Children+Behind+by+Tiffani+Fulmer

__//**Overview **//__ There is currently much debate surrounding the issue of “No Child Left Behind.” This legislation also theorizes that no child be pushed forward. What about those children that are learning far beyond the standards? What about gifted and talented children that do not traditionally fit into a national standards mold. These students often exceed the standards of their peers and often in several academic areas.Long before No Child Left Behind, we knew that children did not learn at the same pace or in the same manners. Yet, our national perspective on education has long been created around a sort of round peg in a round hole approach; where many children that fall along the special education spectrum are square pegs being made to conform to round hole society. The United States government has created unrealistic goals in creating education that exists based on teaching for tests and ignores creativity. The goals set forth by No Child Left Behind put so much emphasis on the instilling the “Three R’s” into the minds of the most disadvantaged students. However, with so much emphasis being place on at risk students some of the nation’s strongest students are being left out by education legislation. Amongst one of the biggest complaints in satisfying the requirements of the law, is that valuable resources are allocated to the lowest achieving students and not properly balanced to also benefit its most gifted. Gifted students are often stereotyped and misunderstood.
 * Our society sees that all children are gifted in their own way and differentiating instruction for higher functioning students is unfair.
 * Legislators that appropriate money for special education services do not always see the necessity in diverting funds away from students whose educational experiences would be hindered in the absence of these services, but gifted children are somehow no longer included as priority.
 * These students are misunderstood that they have the ability to just learn on their own. However, isolating students that are advanced for their grade level and giving them additional independent work does not necessarily foster a richer depth of the material that they need or encourage the intellectual and emotional development that is a an integral counter part of education.
 * Gifted programs are criticized as creating elitist. Our current education programs have focused so heavily on creating egalitarian students that it fails to create opportunities for gifted and talented students. John F. Kennedy said, “All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have equal opportunity to develop our talents.”
 * Many gifted programs have been accused of be racist and serving a majority of affluent white populations. The National Association of Gifted has been worked to create identification methods for underserved populations.
 * Training of diverse populations is limited in many teacher preparation programs, and gifted preparation is no different. Teachers are often intimidated about what to do with gifted children, and classroom differentiation is not well understood or embraced leaving accelerated learners behind and left unchallenged.
 * Possibly the most ridiculous stereotype of gifted is that there is no reason to bother going out of our way or diverting much needed funding for gifted and talented because they are going to pass their state tests anyway. Adequacy is the only expectation placing a low ceiling on the education goals of our students. However, when we are seeing a trend that is continuously showing a decline in the academic aptitude of American children we should be raising the bar on our students and putting our gifted and talented children on the front line. Gifted, talented, and advanced level students should be setting the bar, not accepting it.

__//**Trend or Issue **//__ This topic is both. The trend is more frequently we are seeing children in gifted and talented programs that are overlooked for enrichment education and deemed to be not as important as students failing to meet standards. The issue is that funding for gifted and talented is not often allocated to low socioeconomic schools, and increasingly a variety of socioeconomic class schools. In any case available funding funneled to help at risk children. However, lack of funding in education is always an issue. This is a trend that is leading to the issue of leaving behind many of our most talented children. How do we find the balance between pulling up our at risk students and challenging our gifted and talented ones at the same time. Some school districts have been paying attention. In south Florida, one school district has already to started paying attention to young gifted students. They started recognizing that often times minorities are exceeding their standardized tests scores in elementary school and then falling behind into middle school and high school. In response to awareness of this development the school district has begun testing all first graders for gifted. In identifying gifted children early on they reduce the risk of losing these children to boredom and failure by challenging and fostering creativity. Thus reducing their failure rate and increasing their graduation rates. It is a laborious endeavor, but then so is remediating failing students. Not to mention that by identifying gifted students, they are reducing their numbers of at risk students and better utilizing what funding they do receive for failing, at risk students. Through NCLB we have focused so heavily on bringing all students to a certain level of proficiency that we have failed to recognize that this practice discriminates against the special needs of gifted. Gifted education still falls on the special education spectrum. But because these special education children fall so far to the right on the IQ bell curve, they are expected to ride the education wave of adequacy. As a nation we have become so focused on fairness and equality that we have actually created failing students. We do encourage creativity and diversity. In creating a system of standardization we have accepted adequate as normal and normal as exceptional. In all actuality, it is quite the contrary where exceptional students are quite unique and unordinary. But, these children are viewed as different, weird, geeky, or so smart that they do not warrant the extraordinary attention or services through the public education system. It is equally the responsibility of our public education systems senior administrators to see to that equality in education and funding is funneled through all programs from one end of the bell curve to the other, from one special education student to the other, and from at risk all the way through excellence.

Brulles, D. and Winebrenner, S. (2012). Clustered for Success. //Educational Leadership, p.41-45.// The article discusses the strategy of cluster grouping gifted students in order to avoid losing their enrollment in U.S. schools due to the educational requirements of the U.S. No Child Left Behind educational legislation and school choice availability. The author comments on ability grouping's impact on teachers' time management with individual students, student placement according to performance on educational tests, and curriculum or lesson compacting. Topics include a comparison of cluster grouping with Response to Intervention which schools use for low-achieving students, as well as the differentiation of instruction for advanced learners.
 * //__Bibliography __//**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Golden, D. (2003, December 23). Initiative to Leave No Child Left Behind Leaves Out Gifted. //Wall Street Journal Online.// The No Child Left Behind Legislation created a system to help our nations weakest children. The problem that this article proposes is that it takes necessary funding for the nations brightest children away. The program has reduced or eliminated completely the funding for gifted education programs. The elimination of these programs has removed several gifted students from their programs where they flourished. However, this article also cites that No Child left behind may indeed uncover some gifted children scoring below proficiency.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> National Association for Gifted Children There is many questions whether No Child Left Behind Legislation addresses the learning needs of gifted students. This article simply answers "yes" and "no." It points out the definition of gifted and talented outlined in the NCLB and talks about the responsibility of gifted and talented advocates in making sure that funding that is supplied is utilized in gifted and talented programs.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Rawe, Julie (2007, September 13). No Gifted Child Left Behind. //Time.com.// This article discusses how low-socioeconomic children often score very high on standardized test. However many of these students are falling out of the top tiers as they advance in school. The author cites where legislation would provide incentives to schools that moved students from "proficient to advanced levels."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Spielhagen, F. and Cooper, B. (2005). The Unkindest Cut: Seven Stupid Arguments Against Programs for the Gifted. //Davidson Institute for Talented Development.// This article discusses fallacies surrounding gifted and talented students. Gifted students are often misunderstood that they don't need instruction, these are always rich white kids, they don't need special resources, and that these students are very often stereotyped as "weird" or "geeky."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Teachers With Apps (2012, April 24). What Ever Happened to Common Sense? No Child Pushed Ahead. (Blog) This emphasizes that not all students are created equal, so how do we accurately rate them against each other using the same test? The author also makes the argument for a square peg in a square hole educational system inevitably is going to lead to school-wide failure.