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.<\/p>\n
It makes many great points but a few of the items really struck me:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
and then later:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thus continues our countries headlong rush to mediocrity.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Are We Failing Our Geniuses? – TIME<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading Are geniuses worth 1\/10th the mentally retarded?<\/span>