A battle has been brewing among Montgomery County parents, educators and others over whether county schools should continue labeling students as gifted and talented, or GT.
On one side there’s the Montgomery County Education Association, the Equity in Education Coalition and the Montgomery County Education Forum, whose “No Labels, No Limits” campaign asks the Board of Education to eliminate the label and what they consider tracking by ability of students in county schools.
It’s unfair, they say, because white kids are more likely to be labeled as GT than black or Latino kids, who may be shut out from educational opportunities as a result.
“Students who are not considered ‘gifted and talented’ are often tracked to remedial and on-grade level course work from second grade all the way to high school,” the group says on the teachers’ union website.
On the other side, there’s the “Challenge Every Child” coalition. The Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations and the Gifted and Talented Association of Montgomery County worry that ending the identification of GT students, which is required by state law, would mean that those students may not receive the level of coursework and attention they need.
“We believe that MCPS must continue to identify and serve students who are not merely above grade level but are gifted and need different programming than that appropriate for their age peers,” MCCPTA President Kristin Trible wrote to the school board in March.
Such a ruckus over a label.
My older daughter was labeled GT after the Global Screening Process in second grade. As she has moved through magnet programs from fourth grade on through middle school and now high school next year, I’ve always thought the term seemed a bit pretentious.
And she agrees. “The label is dumb,” she says. “It makes it sounds like some kids have no talent.”
We’ve seen the evidence in our own household. Her younger sister, who wasn’t labeled GT after the second-grade screening, has come into her own academically and blossomed into a creative writer. She recently was accepted into a middle school humanities magnet, something that the “No Label” folks say is unlikely to happen for those kids not labeled GT.
The point is that, label or not, we need to recognize that not all kids are the same academically and a “one-size fits all” approach does not work, not for kids considered gifted, and not for those at the other end of the learning curve.
Providing a challenging education for all children is the worthy goal. The question is: how to do that without creating perceived inequalities. My older daughter says she doesn’t consider herself any different from kids outside her middle school magnet program, but the other students certainly do. She and her friends have gotten used to the slurs thrown their way in the halls from the other students.
Eliminating grouping by ability in favor of differentiating instruction within the classroom doesn’t seem to be the answer. With classroom sizes of 25 or more, how can we expect teachers to provide individualized instruction without grouping students by ability?
It is a conundrum that school Superintendent Jerry Weast recognizes. In a recent interview in The Washington Post Magazine, Weast says, “If you just focus on closing the achievement gap, people think you’re going to lower the bar. If you concentrate on just excellence, people think that you are going to leave bunches behind. So we came up with a phrase—raise the bar and close the gap.”
But Weast, who is retiring in June after 12 years as county superintendent, notes that this can’t be done at the expense of “your high-end kids.”
“That’s a lesson for every superintendent,” he says. “Do not leave those kids behind. They need a push just as much as anybody.”
