Just when critics were thinking education couldn’t get any more dumbed-down, the California Department of Education has come up with a new program guaranteed to keep high-achieving students from getting any farther ahead.
Once dubbed the “gifted” program, accelerated classes for students are ending. Instead of being allowed to work at their own pace and studying calculus, for example, higher achieving students will now have to sit in the same classrooms staying at the same level as everybody else, until everybody else is ready to move up.
The new slow-it-down program is being created in the name of equity: The thinking is that too many students are being sorted into different tracks based on their natural ability. So, instead of raising the bar for students at the bottom and giving them more attention and help in an effort to get their skills higher — or, rather than giving those students the choice of simply opting out of higher math curricula — the thinking is to just lower the bar for the higher-achievers and put everybody on the same level.
“We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents," is one of the bullet points in the first chapter of the framework plans, Reason reported. California isn’t the only state doing this, though. Other states have been planning to do away with gifted programming for several years.
For example, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and education officials announced in 2019 that it was time to quit tracking students because it discriminated against kids of color, and they too are currently implementing those plans. Seattle announced in January 2020 that they want to dismantle the gifted programs too.
SOURCES:
Reason May 4, 2021
New York Daily News April 15, 2021
Reason January 27, 2020