I have had a lot of conversations in my career where it is offered that the solution to the problem of challenging students is simply to add more rigor. It is as though a teacher could go to the spice rank and hunt amongst the dill and the Cayenne pepper to find a bottle of rigor that can simply be shaken on the class and the problem will be solved. 

The major problem of simply adding rigor to the classroom is that there are a fair share of teachers who do not know what rigor actually is. They equate rigor with being harder. And how do you make the class harder? The easiest way is by giving students more things to do and less time to do them. This, my friend, is not rigor.1 In fact, many students resent just being given more, especially if it is the same work. The idea of rigor is to provide different work that is going to challenge students. And where is the best place to challenge a student? With their thinking.

This narrative follows into the assessment of students. How do you have rigorous assessments? By asking harder questions. But again, this is not rigor. You could ask a student to provide the name of the US Ambassador to China. It is not common knowledge that this would be Terry Branstad, but it is still just knowledge. There lies the problem. Just like giving more of the same work, asking questions that are all knowledge-based questions are not going to challenge students’ thinking no matter...

As a gifted coordinator, I get asked a lot of questions. Curiously, the question I probably get asked the most is not what great things are you doing, how can I be involved, or what way do we best reach our gifted students? The question I get asked the most is what does a gifted coordinator do? Even by adults. When I was a teacher, it was easy. Someone asked what I did, I stated I was a teacher, and they just nodded their head like they knew what that meant. Now when I say I am a gifted coordinator, I get a look that indicates befuddlement. 

Explaining it to students is the greatest challenge. They will ask, “are you a teacher?” When I inform them I am actually the district gifted coordinator; they ask “what is that?” My initial response is always “I coordinate gifted” as though the title bespoke the duties involved. This only causes more confusion though. The challenge is explaining the many things a gifted coordinator might do so that a person who knows nothing about it can understand the basics. 

So, that leads me to the question, “what does a gifted coordinator do?” To steal a phrase my educational law professor always used; it depends. Much like gifted itself which is defined differently from state to state, district to district, so too is the idea of...

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...