Education Week - November 13, 2019 - 20

OPINION

INSIDE

16

17

18

How to Close Gifted
Education's Opportunity
Gap

It's Time for Schools
to Completely Ban the
"N Word"

Letters to
the Editor

Stop Scapegoating Gifted Children
We must face our
discomfort that kids
have different
intellectual capabilities

W

hen I began teaching children
with cognitive difficulties more
than 40 years ago, it seemed
that everyone I met had something positive to say about me
or my job selection: "You must
have infinite patience." "We
need more teachers willing to work with students who learn
differently." "I could never do such a demanding job."
Several years later, after having worked with a 5th grader
who had both learning challenges and an incredibly sharp
intellect, I changed my career focus to the other end of the
special education continuum:
I became a teacher of gifted
By James R. Delisle children. Never before
had I worked with such a
DELISLE is a retired
complex child-one who both
distinguished professor of
excelled academically while
education from Kent State
University and the author of simultaneously facing definite
24 books, including the 2018 learning and behavioral issues.
Doing Poorly on Purpose:
I figured if one child like this
Strategies to Reverse
existed, others did, too. I
Underachievement and
wanted to help these types of
Respect Student Dignity
kids.
(ASCD/Free Spirit). For the
I thought that my work with
past eight years, he has
gifted kids would be considered
taught a freshman seminar
as valuable as my work with
for gifted high school
children with cognitive
students in Conway, S.C.
difficulties. However, that's
when the laudatory comments
stopped and vocal criticisms took the place of the close-tosainthood comments I had received earlier in my career: "We
should spend our scarce education dollars on kids who really
need it, not gifted kids." "Gifted kids don't need you half as
much as those who struggle to learn." "Why are you teaching
kids who already have it made in school?"
It all seemed so odd to me, as common sense would dictate
that whichever extreme of the intellectual bell curve children
fell on, they would have unique learning needs not experienced
by so-called "average students."
Of course, I experienced this logical schism more than four
decades ago, so things would certainly be different today, in
2019. And they are. The schism is worse. Today's gifted children
and their special education programs are blamed for many
of society's ills-educational inequality, racial and economic
divisions, and the promotion of elitism among the parents
whose children have been identified as gifted. I'm not exactly
sure why this schism has gotten bigger instead of smaller, but
it might have something to do with our collective American
discomfort in labeling some kids more intellectually capable
than others. And, as a result, gifted kids have become the
educational scapegoats for detractors seeking to blame them
for simply being themselves.
The most recent salvo into this educational firestorm is
the recommendation of the New York City School Diversity
Advisory Group, a commission appointed by Mayor Bill
DeBlasio, to eliminate most gifted programs in the city and

Spencer Flock for Education Week

blend the most intellectually capable children into general
education classes where the 1st, 4th, or 10th grade teachers will
(in theory) be able to meet gifted students' advanced academic
needs.
Proponents of this plan consider the high percentage of White
and Asian children in the New York City gifted programs and
schools to be de facto evidence of the above-mentioned -isms:
racism, classism, and elitism. But, instead of seeing the racial
and economic imbalance in gifted programs as a cry to expand
methods of identifying giftedness in populations of children
who are underserved by them, the solution is to toss out what
works for some children because it doesn't work for all children.
Eliminating gifted programs, in the New York City schools or
anywhere else, would be a capitulation to simplistic thinking
that denies a blatant reality: that gifted children, like any other
children with atypical leaning needs, require an education that
embraces their needs, not ignores them.
Using this same faulty logic, I have to wonder if the New York
City schools should consider eliminating classes and programs
for those with developmental delays, as children of color and
students from poverty are generally overrepresented in such
options. How about varsity basketball teams, as they tend to be
underrepresented by short people and those who can't run fast?
Or theatre and music programs where auditions are required, as
these auditions tend to eliminate those who can't memorize a
script or sing like a songbird?
My hunch is that lawsuits would surely follow attempts to
eliminate programs for children with learning challenges.
And, woe to the public school that promotes an "everyone
can be on the varsity team" approach to athletics, as game
attendance would surely drop without some baseline
standard of performance as a prerequisite for becoming
a point guard. When common-sense standards are set to
match the expectations of performance in either academic or

20 | EDUCATION WEEK | November 13, 2019 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion

"

Today's gifted children
and their special education
programs are blamed for
many of society's ills."
extracurricular endeavors, we are not practicing discrimination.
Instead, we are recognizing that different kids have different
levels of gifts and talents, plain and simple.
I have taught and counseled thousands of gifted children and
teens. Each of these kids had a parent or other caregiver who
wanted nothing more than what every other parent or caregiver
wants for their own children: the chance to shine in their own
light and to have their intellectual and other learning needs
appreciated, respected, and addressed.
Gifted children have always been in our schools-and they
always shall be. Denying them educational equity while
offering it to every other child with a learning difference is the
ultimate example of misplaced bias. By seeking to eliminate
gifted programs entirely, New York City schools and any other
jurisdiction inclined to follow their lead would be well-advised
to consider that the true meaning of equity is rooted in fairness
and justice. Applying this understanding of equity universally in
schools, not by whim, serves all of our students well, including
those who are gifted. n
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Education Week - November 13, 2019

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