Education Week - April 16, 2014 - 34

Jared Boggess for Education Week
LETTERS to
the EDITOR
Infants, Toddlers Are Georgia's
'Next Frontier' for Learning
To the Editor:
Now that Georgia's state-funded pre-K
program (which, according to a recent report,
significantly affects language, literacy, and
math skills in pre-K students) has celebrated
its 20th anniversary, I am often asked
about our "next frontier" in early-childhood
education ("Those in Georgia's Universal
Pre-K Tested Better Than Unenrolled Peers,
Study Says," Early Years blog, edweek.org,
March 11, 2014).
Many early-childhood experts look at
pre-K and ask, "Why don't we start earlier?"
Consequently, Georgia's next frontier is
enhanced infant and toddler care, an area we
are pioneering through the Georgia Program
for Infant Toddler Care, or GAPITC.
Now is our opportunity to focus on
preparing children from birth to age 3
for pre-K. Studies indicate that children
from lower-income households or nonEnglish-speaking
families hear 30 million
fewer words by age 3 than children from
average-income households. Because verbal
language helps lay the foundation for future
literacy, these children enter pre-K at a stark
disadvantage.
More language is key, even for infants
and toddlers. But to fully take advantage
of this opportunity, our teachers need more
training. In Georgia, we require teachers
of infants and toddlers to have an earlychildhood
credential, giving them a better
understanding of child development and how
to teach children at young ages. And we are
using existing state and additional federal
funding to help early-years teachers enhance
their professional credentials so they can do
an even better job of caring for children.
By working with teachers, providers,
families, and stakeholders, Georgia can
close the achievement gap for our youngest
learners and help meet Gov. Nathan Deal's
goal for every child to read on grade level by
3rd grade.
Given that the majority of a child's brain is
formed within the first three years, that time
is simply too valuable; if we lose it, we can
never get it back.
Bobby D. Cagle
Commissioner
Bright From the Start: Georgia Department
of Early Care and Learning
Atlanta, Ga.
Bright From the Start is responsible for early care
and education services for Georgia's children and
their families.
COMMENTARY POLICY
Education Week takes no editorial positions,
but publishes opinion essays and letters
from outside contributors in its Commentary
section.
For information about submitting an essay or
letter for review, visit
www.edweek.org/go/guidelines.
Gifted Ed. Is
Crucial, But the
Label Isn't
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40
evant is whether the instruction a child receives
is sufficiently rigorous to challenge that child.
When that is not the case, there are many potential
causes.
For instance, maybe a student possesses extremely
high intelligence, is highly motivated,
and works hard in the subject, or maybe she already
learned the content at home. The reason
behind the lack of a challenge isn't as important
as the match-or mismatch-between student
readiness and classroom curriculum.
The traditional model of gifted education proceeds
as follows: Identify "gifted" students, using
one or more tests of intelligence, achievement, or
creativity, and provide programming.
But why is the gifted label necessary to provide
programming? Are we as a society able to challenge
students appropriately only when we give
them a label? If a student has mastered all of the
content that is about to be presented, should the
decision regarding how or whether to appropriately
educate him in that subject area revolve
around whether he has been labeled as gifted?
We believe the concept of giftedness is not nec-
iStockphoto
'Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired' About the Common Core
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33
mented in the public schools of Washington.
And while this may be a step
forward in raising the education standards
for the children in the nation's
capital, it will take a while for it to have
a significant impact. As just one example
of the success of a city's voucher
program, students enrolled in the D.C.
Opportunity Scholarship Program are
graduating at a rate that is 30 percentage
points higher than that of students
who attend the city's regular public
schools.
That's why choice matters when it
comes to how we educate our children.
Even as education reformers debate the
debate, choice provides an immediate
and positive solution. While the adults
around the country continue to bicker
about the standards, who's looking out
for the children teetering on the brink
of dropping out of school?
Parents and children nationwide are
in dire need of high-quality education
opportunities. Children like Marcus
and Ahshiya and their families, who
were given the opportunity to select
the schools of their choice, do not necessarily
care if the common core is implemented
in those schools or not. They
just know that they have been given a
life-changing opportunity and the tools
to succeed.
Today, we need to put a renewed focus
on the parents and children searching
for immediate opportunities to exercise
educational choice. Sure, classroom accountability
and rigorous standards
matter, as does the outcome of the
common-core discussion. But, I fear
that political debating just for the sake
of debate will only further divide com-
34 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 16, 2014 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary
munities and stall the momentum that
has been building over the past several
years. The end result only does harm to
the kids we say we are serving.
When I wrote about the common-core
debate last year in an essay for the
Huffington Post, I said my fear was that
after all the blood had been shed, there
would be limited energy and vigor left
for changing the conditions that block
our kids from receiving quality educations.
Since then, the standards debate
has become even more hostile and the
politics associated with it are toxic.
Look at the legislative fights in Indiana,
Oklahoma, New York, and Louisiana.
So now I challenge those on both sides
of the standards debate to answer one
simple question: What do you propose
we do to educate kids in bad schools
today? Let's hope we all still have the
energy to take that on. n
essary to reach the goal of challenging all learners.
In place of the traditional model, we suggest
an alternative process:
* Identify academic needs that are not being
met by existing educational programming;
* Create or locate appropriate interventions for
those needs; and
* Locate all students who have a need for or
would benefit from those interventions.
This new process is intensely local. Teachers
should ask: "Who is not being challenged in my
math classroom today? Which students won't
learn anything new from next year's science curriculum?"
Every school has students who could
do more if they were appropriately challenged.
Once these questions are answered, the next step
is to determine the educational intervention necessary
to ensure that the student learns something
new. For example, an 8th grader who has mastered
algebra may be considered on grade level according
to some content standards. But if, overall, the school
is far behind, the teacher is probably not focused on
keeping that child challenged. This results in the
kind of mismatch between academic readiness and
curriculum that is the very reason that differentiated
programming is needed.
Schools need a program or policy so that administrators
and teachers proactively consider
such needs and put procedures in place to address
them. This can be as simple as making agebased
grade classifications more flexible, allowing
for early entrance to kindergarten, or implementing
policies that encourage teachers to plan lessons
with differentiated content in mind.
Del Siegle, a former president of the National
Association for Gifted Children, an organization
we support, once said that all children deserve to
learn something new every day. Students who are
reading and writing at the college level should
not be required to work on basic sentence structure.
Those who are ready for calculus should not
have to sit in an algebra class simply because
that's what most people their age are doing. Such
practices undermine student motivation and result
in little academic growth.
The time has come to create K-12 models that
consider how to properly challenge all students
who-at any point in time-are ready for more
advanced curricula; not just those we deem
"gifted" in some global, unchanging fashion divorced
from the educational needs of the child.
By focusing less on the child's label and more on
the child's needs, we will better serve those students
in our schools who are ready and hungry
for greater academic challenges. n
http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/guidelines http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary
Education Week - April 16, 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 16, 2014
