Expert in multicultural and gifted education to visit Madison

A support group for parents of talented and gifted (TAG) students, the Madison TAG Parents Group, is pleased to announce that Donna Ford, Ph.D., will be visiting Madison on February 8 and 9 to discuss the issues surrounding the identification and retention of gifted and talented low income and minority students. Dropout data from the school district classify more than 25% of all dropouts as well behaved high achievers. More than 50% of these students are low income and more than 40% of them are minority students.

Dr. Ford is the Betts Chair of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. She conducts research primarily in gifted education and multicultural/urban education. Specifically, her work focuses on: (1) recruiting and retaining culturally diverse students in gifted education; (2) multicultural and urban education; and (3) minority student achievement and underachievement.

Dr. Ford's work has been recognized by many different professional organizations. She received a Research Award from the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies; an Early Career Award from The American Educational Research Association; an Early Scholar Award from The National Association for Gifted Children; and the Esteemed Scholarship Award from The National Association of Black Psychologists. She has published more than 90 articles and is the author of Reversing underachievement among gifted black students (1996) and a co-author of Multicultural gifted education (1999) and In search of the dream: Designing schools and classrooms that work for high potential students from diverse cultural backgrounds (2004).

Dr. Ford will be meeting with TAG staff and administrators during her visit, and will be speaking about multicultural education at West High School as part of a staff in-service. She is also scheduled to give a colloquium on Wednesday, February 9, in the UW Department of Counseling Psychology. On Tuesday evening at 7:30 p.m., Dr. Ford will be giving a community presentation at Wright Middle School, 1717 Fish Hatchery Rd. She will be talking about increasing the participation of at risk students in gifted and talented education. This presentation is open to all interested parents and community members. Translation will be available for Spanish, Hmong, and hearing impaired audience members. For further information, please contact Jeff Henriques, jhenriqu@wisc.edu or visit the TAG Parents website: http://tagparents.org.

You can find out more about Donna Ford by visiting her webpages: http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/sped/ford.htm

Posted by Jeff Henriques at January 26, 2005 3:30 PM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas