Support from educators

Ah, yes, sforsmo, I understand what you're saying. One of the other challenges many teachers face--often young teachers especially--is the lack of training in "special" education. (In this context, by "special" I mean everything from running classrooms for children with special needs to teaching in a gifted environment...anything that falls outside of a traditional, mainstream classroom definition.) The university-level coursework I took while preparing to become a teacher barely touched on best practices for teaching kids with learning differences or for teaching gifted students (if at all). I didn't learn how to recognize gifted students, let alone how to challenge and engage them. There's often such a strange disconnect between teacher prep courses and the actual, day-to-day experience of running a classroom!

Yes I need to get a few things done myself.
Check out Practica Music for your young musician. My guy loves it. Music theory and very comprehensive.
Better than World of War Craft or other such junk.

kskksk,
Totally in agreement about your husband's "middle of the road" assessment. I used the term elitism because it's the one that's been thrown around. I'm chuckling though, kskksk, elitism a hot button and "eugenics" not? I'm not even touching that one with a 10 foot pole! Anyways, I think you make an excellent point with all the tests and measures, and if teachers were truly in control they would (mostly) be the best ones to assess the potential and progress of their individual students. Unfortunately, those days of autonomy (along with discipline in the classroom) are long gone. I am almost 51 years old and come at this from a somewhat old school perpsective, but I truly think it was better when the teachers had more say about the content and structure of their classrooms. I have to go now, I'm grading portfolios for my night class! Thanks for your thoughtful and spirited replies.....keep em coming!

sforsmo
I never take offense with these types of discussions. That term "elitism" gets such a wild reaction all the time. Ellite is define as:
1. a group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status

That is what is at stake in peoples minds I guess who resent gifted. Access to status or no access to status and potentially the economic success that provides. A bit paranoid maybe but who can argue that kids who end up in good colleges make more money. Oh well, I can't argue the symantics. Call it by any other name I guess. What a hot button. That is good you are so predisposed to action and it sounds like your child has benefited greatly.

It is really amazing how although there are many tests and measures, the whole system seems like a real shoot from the hip type of process. Coach or teacher the weak link and the strong links are individuals within the system. It is difficult to bet the farm on the odds of getting a good teacher or a not so great one. As far as status quo, my husband always says schools are designed for the kid in the middle, not the ones who rest at either end of the spectrum of abiliites. The key word is designed. They do what they are designed to do and not a whole not more. Those schools who are designed differently can reach a broader range of student but that takes risk taking and extraordinary political will at the school and district level.