. Greetings,
Jan just returned from the 2004 National
Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) conference in Salt Lake City and enjoyed the opportunity to chat with many of
you who attended. We appreciate your enthusiasm for Genius
Denied and your support of our advocacy efforts. We are
energized by the renewed excitement of the gifted education
community that was evident at this outstanding event; many thanks to
Executive Director Nancy Green and her terrific team at NAGC and to the
wonderful people in Utah for making us all feel so welcomed!
We're enjoying your mail. We are
answering the most frequently asked questions here. Regarding
the other questions, if you have not already heard from us or our
staff, we'll have them all answered and emailed to you personally
within the next week.
As always, we welcome your suggestions
and feedback.
Jan
and Bob Davidson
Q.
When you speak about acceleration for gifted students, would
you clarify exactly what you mean?
Is “acceleration”
just another word for “grade skipping?” J. Stanfield
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A.
Acceleration
can appropriately challenge a bright student’s abilities by
increasing pace and/or expanding content. Grade skipping
is one kind of acceleration, but there are many others. In the
Templeton National
Acceleration Report:A Nation Deceived, W. Thomas Southern and Eric D. Jones
identify 18 different types of acceleration, which fall into
two broad categories: grade-based acceleration which shortens
the number of years a student spends in the K-12 system and
subject-based acceleration, which allows for advanced content
with greater depth. For the educator, the question is not whether
to accelerate the gifted learner but how.
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For more information, go to the Acceleration Links on the
sidebar.
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Q.
After the
compelling arguments you make in your book Genius Denied, it
is difficult to understand why schools aren’t accommodating our
gifted kids. What is going to be required to make change happen?
A. Winslow
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A.
Our
hope is that information, such as that compiled in the Templeton
National Report on Acceleration: A Nation Deceived as well as that in Genius Denied,
will spur discussion and action that will lead to positive
change. In the last section of Genius Denied, we make
specific recommendations regarding what students, parents,
educators, patrons, mentors and policy makers can do to create
an educational environment that values high achievers and
nurtures their gifts. It is primarily going to require a change
of attitudes accompanied by legislation, the courts,
administrative rules, and professional initiatives.
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For more Resources to Encourage Positive Change, go to the links on the
sidebar.
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Q. We
have decided to homeschool our highly gifted child who isn’t being
served by the one-size fits all educational program at our local
school. Most home schoolers are doing so for religious purposes. How
can we find home schoolers who are doing so for academic reasons?
S. Thoman, P. James, F. Zachery
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A.
Most of the families we encounter are homeschooling for
academic reasons. We often refer to the homeschooling movement
as "bright flight" in view of the fact that homeschooled students outscore public school students by an
average of 30 to 37 percentile points across all academic
subjects. There
are many resources on the web for finding homeschooling
groups; you might want to check out National
Home Education Network. Most states have a homeschooling
association where you can meet other homeschoolers.
Also, we recommend that you look for a homeschooling
group that is sensitive to the needs of gifted students; a
popular site among the families we serve is www.learninfreedom.org.
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For more information, go to the
Homeschooling Links on the sidebar.
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Q. What's
all this about kids' intelligence "leveling off" as they
get older? Is that true of some, or any, children, or is this
just a way to justify the practice of educational mainstreaming?
L. Omurchu |
A.
It’s nonsense! One’s
intelligence doesn’t “level off.”
However, if a child fails to receive an educational
program that allows her to learn something she doesn’t
already know, she may become bored and disinterested in
school…and give the appearance that she is “dumbing
down” or no longer gifted.
.
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For more
information on the Characteristics
of Giftedness, go to the
links on the sidebar. |
* * *
Please send any questions to be answered in future newsletters to: JanandBob@davidsongifted.org.
NOTE: Due to space constraints, questions answered in this newsletter may
be edited and similar questions combined.
If
you or your organization would be interested in a book signing or a
"Meet the Author" session with the authors of Genius
Denied, please email your request
to cpriester@davidsongifted.org or visit
Genius
Denied
- On Tour.
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Making a
Positive Difference
Nicole
Ali developed a
process to grow blood-forming stem cells outside the body; her
research could open doors to treat blood disorders, such as
leukemia.
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Rachel
Naomi Kudo,
who
started performing concertos on the piano when she was four, is now
performing symphonies with the world's greatest orchestras.
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|
Shuyu
Wang discovered
how DNA “bends” under certain circumstances to form RNA,
leading scientists to further understand one of the biggest
questions in biophysics.
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We
applaud the 2004 Davidson Fellow Laureates for developing their
talents to make the world a better place.
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