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Check out this article. I copy it all for archive prevention.

Its simply outrageous ! Lets water down the only thing gifted, already finanically-challenged GATE program.

In a nutshell, this is the kind of Blank Slate thinking that actually causes damage !
I've added bold text and comments in italics.


The Seattle Times: Local News: Federal Way widens search for gifted kids

Only a handful of students at Lake Grove Elementary used to qualify each spring for the gifted and talented program in the Federal Way School District. ooh, bad district. EVERYONE should be gifted !

This year, however, the parents of 27 students got calls inviting their children to a new gifted class at the school. YEAH!

In the name of equity, Federal Way is changing the way it selects students for advanced classes, relying less on tests and more on teacher observations and student work to look harder for students, especially students of color, who have been overlooked before. ( overlooked. yeah thats it)
The district started the changes in two Federal Way elementary schools this year — Lake Grove and Panther Lake. Next year, the changes will expand to all elementary schools.

If Lake Grove's experience holds elsewhere, Federal Way may soon become one of the few districts in the state where classes for gifted students are as ethnically diverse as their student population as a whole


Some worry that the changes, which include expanding the definition of gifted to include those with special abilities in art and leadership, may dilute the value of the classes for students who are the most academically advanced. But they also say Federal Way's efforts are laudable and worth watching.

"It sounds like a worthy experiment," said Nancy Robinson, professor emeritus at the University of Washington and former director of the Robinson Center for Young Scholars, which helps highly capable students enter college early. (experiment with your kids. leave mine alone)

Until now, Federal Way, like most districts, relied heavily on tests to select students for its Gifted and Talented Education (G.A.T.E.) program. Students who scored the highest in the most subjects usually were the ones to enroll in a full-day program at a handful of schools — about 250 students each year. Another 500 students spent a day, or part of a day, in an enrichment class, said Gwen Knechtel, G.A.T.E. program manager.

Yet, in Federal Way and most districts, white students and sometimes Asian Americans tend to be overrepresented in gifted classes when compared with their numbers in the district as a whole.
( I think Asians are underrepresented in the NBA ... time to do something !)

In Washington state overall, black students make up about 6 percent of fourth-grade classes, but only 2.6 percent of the fourth-graders in gifted classes are black, according to estimates by the Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission. (AAHHHH!) White students account for 70 percent of the fourth-graders, but 81 percent of fourth-graders in gifted programs are white.

That can give an impression that white students are smarter, said Karen Dickinson, Federal Way's assistant director of curriculum and instruction.

"I don't think that's what we want to be saying ... or anyone should be saying," she said. ( oh heaven forbid. Perhaps there are slight statistical differences between the races. Is that so hard to accept ? It does not lead, as many think to racism. I'll find the appropriate Pinker quote later..... )
Dickinson and others think the tests used to select gifted students tend to favor those from middle- and upper-class backgrounds.

"Whatever it is that causes kids from poor backgrounds not to perform well on tests is obviously what's keeping some of them out of gifted programs," said Joseph Renzulli, director of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented in Connecticut. ( but they're not giving this to poor people, their giving it to African Americans).

"Life would be a lot easier and identification would be a lot tidier if we could say, 'Let's look at the test score and see who's gifted,' " he said. "I don't think that's the way it is." ( Oh it isn't ? Its worked for colleges for decades. )

Paul Slocumb, co-author of "Removing the Mask: Giftedness in Poverty," says school districts shouldn't ignore students who score high on tests — but shouldn't stop with testing. ( but by expanding GATE, you're taking budget away from high-testing whites and asians)
"There are other children who are equally as bright; it just looks a little different," he said. "They're a little harder to find, but they're there."

For the Lake Grove class, students were selected based on a review of scores on district exams, teacher observations and examples of their work. The three areas were weighted equally.

Teachers were trained to look for aptitude beyond the traditional areas of reading, math and writing ( HOLY CRAP!). The Lake Grove class, for example, includes students with leadership skills, strong verbal abilities and some whom the district calls "gifted underachievers" — talented students who don't always do their work or do only the work that interests them.

The class is 52 percent white and 48 percent minority, compared with 48 percent white and 52 percent minority for the rest of the school. ( this is a statistical deviation that is to be expected.... certiainly nothing alarming that requires this draconian measures!)

Many of the students — whites and minorities — say they were surprised to be asked to enroll.

"It's cool that I'm smart," said Shaylee Jackson, 9, who is white. Until this year, she said, "I didn't feel smart."

Karen Mauthe, an articulate 11-year-old with a background that's Native American, Latino and white, said the class changed her whole attitude about school.

Before, she was bored, and when she got bored she'd crumple paper or fail to listen — and get in trouble. When it came to math, she felt dumb.

Now, she says, she's the first one to raise her hand, even during math lessons.

"I feel smarter and better about myself," she said. ( and when she gets to higher levels, she may get waxed by true genius, and the house of cards will come tumbling down)
Not all the students have excelled academically, said teacher Mindy Thompson, but all are above grade level in at least one area. "We're widening our embrace," she said. "We're gifting them, in my opinion. We're giving them confidence." WE ARE GIFTING THEM ?!?!?!!? WHY DON'T WE GIFT EVERYONE ?!?!!?!

The district hopes that confidence will carry into middle and high school and that more minorities will enroll in the most challenging courses.

"We believe that, starting at this level, we can create a cadre of kids able to take advanced-placement classes," said Dickinson, the assistant curriculum director.

"We hope to do this for all children, but you have to start with something very overt and very symbolic." Good GOD ! Symbolism over substance !! Rush nails this one on the head. However laudable Federal Way's goals, however, some wonder if classes for the gifted are the place to pursue them.

Robinson, who has worked in gifted education for decades, says she's always leery of opening gifted classes to those whose strengths aren't academic.

"When a child is artistically gifted, a regular class is not necessarily inappropriate for them because classes are not about art. They're about reading, math and social studies," she said.

The fact that students of color are underrepresented in gifted classes reflects larger societal issues, she said, including "the reality that children are different in the opportunities they've had, and therefore what they're ready for."

"I think we're asking programs for gifted children to solve problems that our society has not been able to manage."

WHAT??

Federal Way knows its program will be challenging for teachers.

Along with changing the G.A.T.E. selection process, the district is expanding its full-day gifted program to all its elementary schools, and each of those classes will include students from grades three, four and five.

Thompson, the Lake Grove teacher, says it's not easy to teach a class whose students have such a wide range of ages and abilities. But it's not impossible.

Rather than teaching to the middle, she says, she teaches to the top, then builds bridges to help other students get to that level. And much of the instruction is tailored to each student. Then why have a gifted program at all? Why not just do this in the regular class ?
On a recent morning, a group of fifth-graders sat in a circle in the back, discussing a book they'd all read. Other students worked individually at their desks, including Mauthe, who sang quietly as she looked up definitions of words.

Thompson brought a few students at a time to the front to talk about how to write a summary of a book. After each group, she circled the room, checking to make sure every child was doing something productive.

Federal Way isn't alone in its efforts to diversify its gifted classes. Puyallup, Tacoma, Kent and other school districts also work to ensure that students of color don't get overlooked.

Barbara Maurer, an education consultant who helped start one of Seattle's programs for highly capable students, says all districts are struggling with the ethnic makeup of their gifted programs.

And Federal Way's approach is not the only way to nurture the academic potential of more students. Bellevue, for example, is working to increase the number of minorities in advanced-placement programs by strengthening the curriculum for all students. NOW there is a thought ! But Maurer and others say what Federal Way is doing is exciting and worth watching.


Thats it, I'm moving to Bellevue.

Amazing story about Erik Demaine. 22-year-old professor wins MacArthur grant

I'm going to post random quotes from The Blank Slate as I review the book.
Here goes:
" The brains behind the American Revolution...inherited the tragic vision of thinkers like Hobbes and Hume. The legal scholoar John McGinnis has argued that their theory of human nature could have come right out of modern evolutionary psychology. It acknowledges the desire of individuals to further their interest in the form of an inalienable right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The state emerges from an aggrement instituted to protect those rights, rather than being the embodiment of an auotonomous superorgainism. (Additionally) Rights need to be protected. ... John Adams wrote, 'The desire for the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger (emphasis Pinker). It is the principal end of government to regulate this passion' "

Incredible! Ding dong socialism is DEAD ! Pinker goes onto say essentially socialism is dead and we ( the political left) better get on the ball because we've already ceded too much ground to the intellectual Right. :)

He tries to say that that the Right today cannot lay claim to being validated in its current lugubrious form. I don't see us as lugubrious at all. The Right is on the move, and there may be a point to calling the Right shrill at times (one thinks of the near maniacal Mike Savage), but after 40+ years of captivity, what can you expect? There will be the Savage's but they will die down as the political pendulum starts really swingging Right. I think now the pendulum is just coming off its Left apex. With science, experience, and a new intellectual and not necessarily Christian Right, I predict better political debates, and a more rational field as the far left is chopped off and sent out to sail in the dingy of history's failed ideologies.

This is an excellent article on the unlikelihood of 'Designer Babies' any time soon,
Better babies?, by Steven Pinker, an Evolutionary Psychology Professor at Harvard, previously with MIT. Oooh. Ahhh.

But despite all that, he's got a very fun book to read. Its called The Blank Slate book, and its eye-opening, funny, and challenging. I haven't gotten a firm handle on all of the implications, but he bashes both Right and Left in this book, and I think the implications are huge. Its time that we start factoring Human Nature into our discussions, and toss away alot of the wishful thinking of the 60's Utopian idealism. When I've done more background reading I'll write something more about the Blank Slate, a Pulitzer Prize contender.

Here's Dr. Pinker's home page .

This guy recently did this page, on the boat that I served aboard in the US Navy. Great job ! Weird is the connection between men and ships. USS Kirk Home Page

Wow, this would be fun. We could design a new coin for the USA ! The United States Mint Call For Artists

Introducing Sir Francis Bacon( 1561-1626) -- (from oregonstate.edu)
Francis Bacon was the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Elisabeth I. He entered Trinity College Cambridge at age 12. Bacon later described his tutors as "Men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their Dictator." This is likely the beginning of Bacon's rejection of Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and the new Renaissance Humanism.

THE ESSAYS:
"There be also two false peaces, or unities: the one, when the peace is grounded, but upon an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in the dark: the other, when it is pieced up, upon a direct admission of contraries, in fundamental points. For truth and falsehood, in such things, are like the iron and clay, in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image; they may cleave, but they will not incorporate."


Notice the rejection of Islam, and that even then, 370+ years ago. Christianity had grown up.

"Concerning the means of procuring unity; men must beware, that in the procuring, or muniting, of religious unity, they do not dissolve and deface the laws of charity, and of human society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual and temporal; and both have their due office and place, in the maintenance of religion. But we may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state; much less to nourish seditions; to authorize conspiracies and rebellions; to put the sword into the people's hands; and the like; tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordinance of God. For this is but to dash the first table against the second; and so to consider men as Christians, as we forget that they are men."

Cingular Wireless why do you hate me ? Why, when I sign a montly contract for 40 bucks do I get bills 5 or 10 times that size ? Why does Cingular do that ? Well here it is. Cell phone bills are complex beasts. You have several variables, and its very difficult to know what your spending where. This is why I am going to switch us to prepaid plans. That is the ONLY way to go. Makes me so mad. They were charging us 69 cents a MINUTE for each minute we were over. A LOCAL CALL. I've spent nearly $1000 bucks on this phone in the 6 months I've had it. Thats it though, no more. It ends now. Verizon was WAY better ; we never had these insidious charges. And Roll Over is such a line of crap. I'm rolling over and out a window if I get another one of these killer bills.

I'm calling on Cingular ( no pun intended) to reform their practices and make it easier for people to stay on budget with their phone charges. More on that later.