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The complaints of AP students and parents are unjustified. A smart child that is not getting enough in the classroom should be smart enough to teach themselves. In Guilford County, we discourage children from going to the most competitive colleges. We also discourage children from being Doctors, Lawyers, etc. that require a challenging education path. If you want children to succeed at the highest levels, they must have high goals. I have had teachers and other school personnel tell my children that they should not go to an expensive school like Duke, Wake Forest and Davidson. I have had employees tell my children that certain colleges are "a long way away" and implied they should not go far away from their families to get a great education. When my son announced he was going North to a great school. Some congratulated him, others reminded him how cold it was. The implication was clear, you should not go North no matter how great the opportunity. We have public school in Guilford County. If you want special treatment for your child, I suggest you send them to private school. Even there, I think you will be disappointed. A bright kid need to teach him/her self and be thankful for their gifts.

Joe,

I am offended by your comments. My daughter happens to be one of these "gifted" kids - 99th percentile repeatedly on EOC exams. She also happens to be one of the few who doesn't attend Lincoln (won't get into the reasons here). We can't afford private school, so your "suggestion" means nothing to our family, unless, of course, you'd like to sponsor her.

With the exception of math, there are no challenging classes for these kids (who elect not to go to Lincoln). In Language Arts, the strong AL kids write 10 page research papers and the other kids write 6 page research papers. The rubrics are harder for the AL kids too.

In Science and Social Studies, the students are broken into groups of 4 - each having an AL student as "lead". It's the role of these students to mentor and help teach the others in their group.

Provide the proof when you say kids are discouraged from being doctors, lawyers, and going to school up north. I don't believe it for one second.

The school system discourages children from being all they can be. The most powerful force in achievement is the child's desire to learn. Children should be taught to teach themselves to learn. Harvard takes 20 students a year from North Carolina. How many does Guilford Co. send? Less than one per year. About 12-14 per year come from the Raleigh or Charlotte area. Duke Univ., last year had a needs based scholarship for a student in Guilford Co. No takers. There was not one student in Guilford Co that wanted to go to Duke that needed financia help. Don't wear you kid out in the early grades. The hardest part of education is College and Graduate School. When they get they we want them to be fresh and ready to learn. Let the young kids play. Take them to the library. Don't depend on the public schools to meet all of their needs. I agree, there is no need to send your kids to Lincoln.

Joe,

I disagree with you. Smart kids need challenges, resources and more than just a place to 'teach themselves".
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IMHO, AL in GCS has always been a balancing act between providing needed resources for AL kids and politics with politics usually winning out.

Our experience has been that the AL program started off at an excellent level for elementary students (at least in the VSN program) and then declined from there.

jwg

My fourth-grader started The Academy at Lincoln VSN program this year. I am amazed by his progress thus far. I will venture to say he's learned more in this first grading period at Lincoln than he learned in 6 months at his old school, including his AL classes. He is however struggling with the high standards. For too long the standards for him have been too low and have bred complacency and a bit of laziness. I fear those can be the outcomes when bright students are left to flounder on their own. Any AL teachers out there agree?

Although I am very grateful for The Academy at Lincoln, I do wish my child could be challenged just as well at his neighborhood school. There are enough Lincoln elementary children from our area to make a whole VSN class at our neighborhood elementary school. I really feel for those children who travel all the way from High Point. By the time they get home, all they have time for is homework and supper then off to bed.

I admit I have not been clear and have been wandering all over the place. Children should be challenged to whatever level they can do the work. This does not have to be done in pull-out classes or magnet schools. When I say "AL should teach themselves" I do not mean there is not a place for the teacher. What I do mean is that learning for AL should be reading based. Quiet classrooms with children reading and writing is the preference to teachers "performing" all the time in front of the class.

momfirst - It's also a dead end one way street :}

Joe - IMHO, you're still off in left field if you think that it's adequate to give a kid a book, sit her in the corner & expect her to teach herself (although that is what happens to a lot of AL kids now, I suspect). A good teacher is not just a performer, especially a good AL teacher.

I agree that some students are not self-strarters. However, there are others that are bored by the slow pace of instruction. What I want to do is not load a kid down with homework, but to stimulate his interests. At about 7 years old, my son got excited about chess. He read many books and played a lot. He no longer has interests in chess but exploring it at one point of his life was great for his development. The AL kids that want to read and explore new areas of interest should be provided the time to do so. Is this crazy or not?

Brian - as for your article... I would like to address the lack of differentiation available in the neighborhood middle school. My 8th grader attended the VSN prgram from 3-6 grade. For non-accademic reasons we moved him to his neighborhood school for 7th grade (after assurances he would still get high level instruction for his 4 core classes). For 7th grade that was basically true due to the team approach used. Now in 8th grade the site based decision was made to only cluster AL kids for math and LA. He is getting some differentiation in SS (because of that teacher) and none at all in science. He is bored out of his mind! I wish we had left him at Lincoln, and so does he. Everything said here about transportation, friends, etc. is true. Attending Lincoln comes at a great sacrifice. But, we have learned that it's an even greater sacrifice to attend the neighborhood school and get no challenge at all for 85% of the day (in spite of an AL Plan that requires more). This is no way to prepare a high IQ child for high school or college. Unfortunately, Lincoln is it. If you want your VSN child challenged they must go there to get it. They must endure a long bus rides and lack of afterschool activities, or parents must comit to spending a lot of time driving them back and forth to avoid that. But, in my opinion, the cost of not going is far greater in the long run. So Joe, you are wrong! In today's GCS classrooms, the only way for high apptitude students to get RELIABLE instruction close to what they need they must go to Lincoln. Otherwise every class is a gamble based solely in the non-mandated skills of the teacher to try and push them farther than the administration requires. Sad, but true.

Brian: I think it's important for everyone to realize that there is a difference between smart kids and gifted kids. Gifted kids process information and learn differently (hence the need for the differentiation) than average students. Many times we confuse this concept. Many smart kids can be successful in the traditional classroom. Teachers trained and certified in gifted education learn various ways that gifted kids learn and should be presenting concepts using those techniques. Additionally the curriculum for gifted students is designed to be more experiential, and given the pace of the class because gifted students typically grasp concepts quickly, classtime can be spent providing a more in-depth and broader approach to a given topic.
Additionally, any child, gifted or not, should be allowed, and ENCOURAGED, to reach his/her full potential. It's clear by the test results of the top percentile of students in GCS that this is NOT currently happening. Test scores for gifted students are not rising at the same rate of other students, and this does a huge disservice to these bright students in the same way it is a disservice to any student who is not allowed to reach his/her full learning potential. Students are students and should not be required to teach themselves or have their parents teach them. Public schools are for ALL students, gifted included. Nor should their days be spent reading books for 6 hours a day which is what my eldest child did when she was in a traditional classroom setting. Yes, she loved, and still loves, to read, but that is not all that school should be for this children. Not all gifted children learn best by reading -- in fact, most MUST have hands-on/experiential learning in order to understand and grasp new concepts.
Another important issue, that is rarely discussed with gifted education is that gifted students can have learning disabilities which sounds oxymoronic, but is a very real issue. Certified teachers should learn how to handle these students as well and this should be incorporated into the curriculum.

Having an AL magnet has unintended consequences. Children below the 6th grade should go to school in the local community. I push reading because it can be adopted at every school without much extra effort. It can also fill in the gaps that many kids experience. Only a portion of our teachers have the ability to inspire our students to the greatest heights. Should all of these teachers be used for AL students or should they be used for the students that are below grade level. If we cannot do both, what should we do?

There needs to be an honest look at how the Advanced Learner Dept. in Guilford County (GC) got into this quagmire of services for gifted students so that GC can move away from the current situation and use the rewriting of the AL Plan to bring credibility back to gifted education. The underlying problem lies not in the services to students as much as it does in the identification of students. Nationally, you would expect approximately 3-5% of students to be identified as gifted. If you look at the figures Guilford County so proudly hails, you will find that percentage much higher. The inflated numbers came about when the program was changed from Academically Gifted to Advanced Learners and the criteria was changed to increase the diversity of the program. The intent is a good thing, but the reality of putting a gifted label on so many children is misleading. The truly gifted (that 3-5% of the population) were naturally caught up in the identification process, as well as a large number of students who are high achievers. As teachers, due to testing pressures, began to put more and more emphasis on bringing up the scores of the low achieving students, the challenge to gifted and high achieving students in the regular classroom unfairly shifted to the Advanced Learner Program. When critics look at how “gifted” students are doing in Guilford County, they need to adjust their numbers to look at the students who fall into that top 5% of the population. Way too many students have been identified that should not have been identified, but who deserve to have their needs met in a rigorous and challenging manner in the regular classroom.

My two cents worth: Guilford County has a program that serves the needs of our truly gifted population of students – the Academy at Lincoln. Perhaps the requirement for attending Lincoln needs to be looked at so that it reflects the top 5% of the GC student population. That would necessitate expanding that program - as it should and would be money well spent. In middle school and high school, for the many deserving students who are not at Lincoln, there should be rigorous and challenging classes modeled after the IB program that is inclusive of all children and not exclusive to a chosen population. At the elementary level, there could be AG specialists who work closely with the regular classroom teachers in delivering high-quality and challenging lessons that are inclusive, flexible, and fluid.

The very good news is that there is no one anywhere better able to lead Guilford County through this quagmire than Lee Ann Segalla. She has the background, experience, creativity, vision and foresight to lead the school system into a new day in identifying gifted students as well as appropriate service delivery in the regular classroom so that all students are on an upward spiral.

I agree with all of you, especially the comments about Lee Ann Segalla. She is outstanding!! Terry Grier did a GREAT DEAL of damage to the AL program during his time here. He was assisted by Deana Hayes. Unfortunately, one of them is still around. I have a much brighter outlook on the future with Lee Ann working for Mo Green. I just hope he will keep Deana and her politics out of the way so that actual progress for ALL children can take place. I also hope that we can get to a point where the parents of gifted students are not always "on watch" to have to fight GCS to maintain the services that we do have because we know that the best interests of our children's education is not what matters, it's only diversity and nothing else. IQ knows no color. Until the identification and administration of AL services gets there we will have problems and the gap at the top will not change.

Lincoln is by no means a perfect situation. But, it is MUCH BETTER than what came before it. One limitation that everyone has to realize is that the program has to be located in a school that actually has space. Most GCS schools are overcrowded (Lincoln is getting there). So while it would be great to have multiple sites to serve the VSN population, there just isn't space in the schools. Having a VSN class at each school would be even more of a challenge. You would need 1 maybe 2 teachers in each school skilled to teach all 4 core subjects at that level. Some schools may only have a few VSN students in the whole school. With less than half of all GCS AL teachers certified to teach AL as it is that would be a real challenge! The peer group of students is one of Lincoln's greatest strengths. It's the first time (and maybe only time) in a lot of these kids’ lives that they will get to be in class with kids "just like them". It actually lowers the "geek" level quite a bit. It's going back to the neighborhood school where the geek problem comes back with a vengeance.