Submitted by Joan Affenit, Nov 9, 2006 10:06

The problem with all these programs is that the officials developing them appear to be oblivious to all current research and best-practices on gifted education. As parent of two highly gifted children who are also dealing with learning disabilities and ADHD, I have about thrown up my hands over the situation nationally.

This is the only population of children who are vilified and ignored for political gain. People somehow believe that just because a child has unusually high cognitive ability they are somehow elitist, and their parents are somehow obnoxious for daring to ask that their child receive an education APPROPRIATE to their needs. Gifted "spaces" should not be doled out like some kind of prize, nor expanded to accommodate mainstream children who don't need them, any more than one would put mainstream children into special education classes.

Imagine the uproar if we doled out special education spaces, and said to a blind child, sorry, we only have five spaces for braille books, you have to do without! Or telling the parents of a mentally disabled child that his local school is taking children from across town so he has to attend a failing school 10 miles away. Truly cognitively gifted children, including those with learning disabilities, and that means children whose intellectual ability is 2 or more standard deviations from the mean, have educational needs as different from "average" children as children whose ability of 2 standard deviations BELOW the mean. And those children (below the mean) usually are granted small, self-contained classes and a plethora of services - which they SHOULD be given, because it's what they need.

Gifted education is not some prize that needs to be "spread fairly" among the population. Children whose ability is less then 2 standard deviations above the mean still deserve a challenging, differentiated education, as do all students, but these children should never for political expediency be permitted to bump highly and profoundly gifted children from spaces in gifted programming, without which those children are being denied the Free and Appropriate Public Education guaranteed by federal statute.

The "equity" issue is upside down. You wouldn't force an 11 or 12 year old average child to attend a 4th grade class because there wasn't enough space in 6th grade. Forcing highly and profoundly gifted children to attend grade level classes with no cluster grouping or differentiation is identical to forcing neurologically typical child to attend classes 2 or more grade levels beneath them. To insist that children whose educational needs are not in the gifted range have "fair shot" at seats in gifted programs is absurd on it's face. To even limit the number of spaces available and shut out any gifted children from access to an appropriate education is equally Draconian. And what about the learning disabled gifted, like mine, who get shut of of these programs even when space would otherwise be available, just because the officials have no education in identifying and educating twice exceptional children?

As a former resident of northen Virginia, I am ashamed of Fairfax County. I was excited recently to learn that they were actually developing programming for twice exceptional children (gifted/learning disabled), which is sorely needed nation wide. Their neighbor to the north, Montgomery County MD, has an admirable program in place. After reading about this, I'm withholding judgment.

There needs to be a national education in giftedness and twice exceptionality, and national guidelines to prevent such abuses as these.

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