Weapons of Mass Obstruction (4/28/04)
On Monday's editorial page, Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools Superintendent Neil Pedersen made a statement some parents may find surprising. "We cannot turn a deaf ear to criticisms that a student is bored or unchallenged in class," he wrote.
Read that sentence very, very carefully and you'll find some compelling and disturbing information. First, it's the opposite of the facts, according to many, many parents of gifted children. Pedersen and his staff have done precisely what he says they "cannot" do.
A deaf ear? Pedersen and his staff have not only lost their hearing, they have unplugged the phones (they don't return calls), turned their e-mail into rubber stamps that say little more than "return to sender" and have flipped the back of their hands to parents whose frustration is becoming manifest.
Several parents have e-mailed me with attachments of their queries to the district staff or school board members in Chapel Hill. These are long, detailed, thoughtful correspondences with detailed, intelligent questions. They get responses like Nick Didow's "Thank you for your e-mail. I will give it thoughtful consideration."
So widely reputed is this response among these parents, Didow would have an easier time trademarking that phrase than Donald Trump would of "You're fired."
Pedersen declares that he believes in the differentiation plan -- and that's good enough for him. Never let evidence get in the way of what you believe.
And as parents are screaming bloody murder about being systematically ignored by the district, he writes about not turning a deaf ear to them. What he says is wholly contrary to the direct experience of these parents as substantiated by voluminous amounts of e-mail. But Pedersen still contends that he's "listening."
The independent research being done by these parents to help develop and operate under the best practices in gifted education is enough to sink a battleship. To see how the district receives this help, you'd think it was enough to sink the district.
Like these frustrated parents, the county commissioners have earned a degree in dentistry for the number of painful extractions (of information) they've experienced with Chapel Hill-Carrboro. One such exchange had exasperated county officials pounding their fists and chewing the furniture for such top-secret information as how many employees the district has.
The clash in these matters is about two things near and dear to everyone involved. Money and power are forceful drivers, after all, and they are integral pieces to the vexing puzzle.
The money involved is the revenue the district gets from the state for students they identify as exceptional. This includes students at both extremes of the spectrum. A student with a high IQ, for example, would presumably be intellectually gifted, though he or she may not test well or be particularly high achieving in the classroom.
Academically gifted kids are typically high achieving, though they can be students who simply work harder and longer to master material earlier or at a deeper level. According to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro district, some 30 percent of students meet one of these descriptions.
But the district gets funds that are capped at a fixed percentage ... it is presumed that the bell curve will work it all out. Chapel Hill-Carrboro may have a disproportionate number of gifted students. Another district may have an unusual concentration of students with learning disabilities or students living in poverty with lesser reading skills, for example.
So the districts find themselves with something of a disincentive to meet the needs of students as individuals. Offering more AP courses doesn't improve the district's overall performance, the argument would go, it just drives costs up in keeping teachers trained in the advanced course work.
In his guest column, Pedersen is careful to talk about what is offered instead of what is being reduced. His district offers 26 AP courses, he says, but never offers a sound explanation for why it's important to individual students that they be discouraged from taking as many AP courses as they want.
In Advanced Placement coursework, the student is at last getting the best approach to teaching gifted kids -- an advanced curriculum the student has self-selected. It is unconscionable to me a district would pursue a policy that will tend to reduce the number of such courses that one student takes. To claim this is on behalf of limiting the "academic pressure" students feel is to insult everyone involved.
"Our schools need to develop more effective accountability measures to determine the academic progress gifted students are making," writes Pedersen.
Sounds to me like a new assessment tool for AG students. Another task force, another multi-year wheel re-invention. Where does it end?
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