I.G.N.I.T.E.: Another Anchorage Gifted Blog

I.G.N.I.T.E.

Today I found another blog, this one ran by a gifted teacher in the Anchorage School District.

He only has a few posts, but I think it illustrates nicely what todays current gifted education consist off.

While some of their activities are interesting (launching a model rocket and seeing how much weight a balloon can lift), I suspect that the activities could of just as been easily accomplished by your average elementary school student.

Why do gifted programs bother to put selective criteria on admission and then dumb down the curriculum?

Can you imagine the outrage if we tried to put all high school students in the same math and english classes? Ability grouping is fine for older kids, but younger kids just have to suffer. Can't let the kids get to far ahead... right?

Last night I taught my 4th grader how to add, subtract, and multiply mixed fractions in approximately one hour, and he isn't even in the gifted program.

Imagine what they (elementary school gifted programs) could do if they spent their two hours a week providing accelerated math instruction, and perhaps some more challenging science and reading.