If you walk into nearly any public high school in the United States you will see the influence that sports have on the school environment. This may be in the trophy case that sits at the front of the school. It might be the posters encouraging athletes to achieve great things against a rival. It could be the pep rally the school holds to encourage and inspire the athletes. Or the press showing up to document the signing of an athlete to a college commitment. Just listening to the announcements, the content is rife with the accomplishments of the sports teams and the athletes that participate.

Conversely, you will not find as large a trophy case for academic accomplishments. Nor are there posters and pep rallies encouraging the improvement of academic achievement. Rarely is there announcement espousing a high ACT score, or is the press clamoring over doing a story on the student who gets into a prestigious Ivy League school. 

When schools were first created in the United States, it was based on the idea that all children needed to be educated. They were taught skills that were thought to be needed such as reading, being able to compute math problems, and become better citizens. Academics was the primary focus of schools as that is why they were created. But something has changed. Schools certainly still care about academics. They still want children to possess skills that will enable them to survive in the world after leaving school. Schools hire teachers with the understanding that they will teach our children in the area of academics. But it seems school and the community care a whole lot more about athletics...

Are gifted programs elitist? This is a criticism leveled upon gifted and talented programs. Some perceive because children are treated differently, with services designed to their specific learning needs, this means they are receiving special treatment. That is certainly one way to look at it. Another, more logical way to look at it is that special education children are treated differently, with services designed to meet their specific learning needs. No one would accuse special education of being elitist. So why the double standard?

The definition of elitist is a class of persons considered “superior” by others or by themselves.

Just the fact that children who achieve gifted identification in cognitive skills are labeled “superior cognitive” instantly puts a target on their backs. What can add to this is the way a district decides to provide gifted services. There is no one prescribed way to offer services. If a school decides to use inclusion where the teacher simply differentiates the curriculum, because the service is not as obvious, it usually avoids being labeled elitist. The one that receives the most scrutiny is...

Gifted education is often labeled as exceptional children and they are. Other exceptional children are special education students. The reason why both of these seemingly polar opposite groups are put together as exceptional is because they have very specific educational needs above and beyond what the typical child receives. The major difference is the special education child is protected by federal law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). That means if a child has been identified as special education and has specific learning needs written into his Individualized Education Plan (IEP), by federal law this must be adhered to by the school or risk loss of funding or a lawsuit. Because there is not a federal law protecting the rights of children identified as gifted, this becomes the right of each state to determine how gifted services...

Today in the state of Ohio, Social Studies met its untimely death. The cause of death is disinterest in the subject area as evidenced by the elimination of state tests in 4th and 6th grades. This acts as the nail in the coffin, as many other states had already given up on the subject area. At the time of its death, Social Studies was working on making students care about government, showing them how to be good citizens and community members, and teaching about the past so as not to repeat similar mistakes in the future.

It is survived by Reading and Math which will no doubt be focused on even more in the classroom with testing in nearly every grade level and teacher bonuses relying on these results.

Social Studies always hoped it was making a difference. At its best, Social Studies provided perspective, something many of our students, and our adults for that matter, are lacking. It will be sorely missed by a few but forgotten by all others.

In Lieu of flowers, Donations may be made in the form of letters to future generations. Please use small words.

Rest in peace, Social Studies. 

Although tongue-in-cheek, this obituary signals an alarming trend in education: the marginalization of Social Studies. There used to be four major content areas; reading, math, science, and social studies. Social Studies was always the red-headed stepchild of this bunch. After all, it did not fit into the educational philosophy...

There are many tests that can be given to identify a student as gifted. There are cognitive tests such as the OLSAT and Terra Nova. There are subject specific tests such as the Stanford. There are some states and districts that use checklists or local norms such as grades and parent recommendations in order to identify students as gifted. But any teacher who has been in gifted education for a number of years can usually spot these gifted students using only the eyeball test. Gifted students have certain characteristics, certain quirks that cause their giftedness to be revealed without needing the test to indicate this. What are some of these characteristics?

Intellectual curiosity

Being gifted means more than simply being smart. It means being intellectually curious about things. Why is that the way it is? How does that work? What would happen if something different occurred? These are the sorts of questions a gifted student would ask. Sometimes it comes off as though the child is questioning the authority of the teacher, but this child is just questioning everything. This is the sort of student who takes something apart...

Now that we are firmly ensconced in the 21st century, we need to reconsider the way traditional education has assessed the learning of students. In many cases, when the student needs to be evaluated teachers fall back on the paper and pencil assessment assigned to everyone at the same time. We cannot think like that anymore. We’re starting to recognize the value of tailoring the educational experience to the individual student, and we need to do the same for assessment. Certain assessments fit with certain students.

For example, let us say you have a student who is not a particularly strong writer but shows a propensity for giving an effective oral argument. Unless the skill you are assessing is writing, why not allow this student to give an oral argument for his assessment? Should it matter how you assess the learning of that student as long as she shows she has mastered it? We need to provide students with options for how to showcase what it is they learned.

One way to assess students differently is by using performance assessments. What exactly is a...

I’ll never forget the time I was working with a cohort of five teachers in a humanities program. We were getting ready to break for the summer and I suggested we read something academic to improve our craft as teachers. I envisioned coming back in the fall to a rich discussion whose lessons we would be able to weave into our practice to make us better teachers. I was surprised when one of my colleagues was very hesitant. Her reasoning: Summer was her time and she didn’t want to read anything having to do with school. She wanted to read the newest James Patterson book. I was shocked at this pushback. Especially for a program that required students to engage in summer reading, here was one of the instructors not wanting to do so. The group went back and forth and eventually the compromise was we would read a book, but it had to be a short one. Here we were judging the worth of the book by the number of pages. We were worse than the students.

Teachers by their chosen profession are the ultimate life-long learners. If you go into the teacher business you are essentially signing up for 30-35 more years of school. No matter how knowledgeable you become on the subject you teach...

The school systems in the United States have spent a lot of time and energy making sure things are equal. In today’s day and age of “everyone gets a trophy and don’t single any one out because it makes others feel bad,” what has happened is we are not treating students fairly. This is especially true with gifted students.

A lot of people equate equality and fairness as one and the same, but they could not be further from one another. Equality is all about treating everyone the same. In certain aspects of education, equality is valuable. For instance, discipline should be equal. If two students violate the same school rule, you cannot punish them differently. When you are grading two students, if they both put the same answer you have to reward them with an equal number of points even if one of the students guessed.

However, if you apply that same equality of consistency and sameness to a child’s education, what ends up happening is you try to lift up the one end while at the same time bringing down the other. In essence this is what teaching to the middle is, and it is something many teachers do in order to create equality in their classroom. Everyone gets the same assignment, and everyone has the same amount of time to work on it. This certainly seems equal but it is most definitely not fair.

The reason why this is not fair is because as much as we would love to think of all children starting in the same place (being equal in other words) they are not. A student with a school ability index (SAI) of 80, one who is at 100, and one who scored a 130, are going to be able to tackle an assignment at different levels of understanding with some being able to take it to a higher level of thinking than others. There is a wide discrepancy in the intelligence, abilities, and effort of children. This wide range is very difficult for a teacher...