In high school, advanced placement courses challenge gifted students with college-level material, but specialized programs for gifted students in elementary and middle grades no longer exist in many schools.īrockton and Quincy are among the last holdouts south of Boston to offer formal programs for academically advanced students. Teachers who specialize in working with gifted students are also a dying breed in the state.Īccording to Weymouth Curriculum Superintendent Leo Egan, state colleges no longer offer teaching degrees in gifted and talented education. “This is mainly to protect kids below grade-level from being offered a lesser curriculum.” “If you look carefully at ed reform, it actually prohibits you from pull-out programs if it replaces the regular class,” said Carver school Superintendent Elizabeth Sorrell. Some school officials say placing children of all abilities in the same classroom is a better way to teach them, but others say it is an uphill battle to keep gifted students challenged.Įducation reform makes it nearly impossible to develop separate programs for gifted students, some school officials say. The near-zero availability of state grant money was tied in part to the 1993 Education Reform Act, which gave rise to the state MCAS test, along with a shift from gifted programs to the practice of placing students of all academic abilities into the same classroom and then trying to dial lessons up or down to match each student's ability. “There has been no money at the state level whatsoever.” “That money dried up,” said Diana Reeves, chairwoman of the association. The money for gifted and talented programs disappeared in the 1990s, educators say, the victim of changing priorities, tight budgets and the education reform movement that led to MCAS and No Child Left Behind.įor two decades, state and federal mandates have shifted more and more dollars into programs for children with special education needs because of physical limitations and learning disabilities. Massachusetts spends $1.8 billion each year on special education, but consistently ranks near the bottom in state spending on programs for students who are unusually gifted or talented. In a state that prides itself on its institutions of higher learning, Brockton is among the few public school districts with programs dedicated to expanding the horizons of elementary or middle school students whose performance sparkles above their peers.Īdvanced placement classes offer some alternatives for high-performing high school students, but most public school systems have little or nothing special to offer such kids for the first eight years of public education. For the last 67 years, Brockton has given the city's academically talented students the opportunity to accelerate their education. The three students are enrolled in the talented and gifted program, called TAG, in the Brockton public schools. In a humanities class, Billy Francis worked with John Daly, both 11, on a computer project in which students created restaurant menus for different periods of history. Twelve-year-old Sarah Raphaelson punched numbers on a calculator in her math class as she figured out how statistics are used in fantasy football.
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