Oddly, the same week where Lori and I were talking about the inbalance between spending on ‘special ed’ and support for ‘gifited’ programs I stumble upon this piece from TIME magazine.

It makes many great points but a few of the items really struck me:

American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs.

and then later:

But since at least the mid-1980s, schools have often forced gifted students to stay in age-assigned grades–even though a 160-IQ kid trying to learn at the pace of average, 100-IQ kids is akin to an average girl trying to learn at the pace of a retarded girl with an IQ of 40.

Thus continues our countries headlong rush to mediocrity.

While we as a society rush to support those that are below the norm we allow to lay fallow those that are our best hope of improving the lives of everyone.

Are We Failing Our Geniuses? – TIME