Can D.C. handle gifted education?

Jay Matthews:

Gifted education rarely draws headlines. Gifted classes are most common in affluent suburbs with many academically oriented families. The kids do well. The parents are happy. No news there.

Gifted education receives little notice in low-income urban school districts because it often doesn't exist there. Big-city schools have more pressing issues than serving children with unusual intellectual talent. Such districts might designate some students as gifted but rarely do much with them.

That is going to change in D.C. public schools when the new academic year begins. D.C. officials are installing an unusual method of gifted education for all in two very different neighborhood middle schools, Kelly Miller and Hardy. At the same time, a new charter school called BASIS D.C. is opening, with the most academically challenging program ever seen in this region.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 9, 2012 1:13 AM
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