Gifted And Talented

Infuriated by a plan they say would dismantle "gifted-and-talented" programs at 51 Baltimore elementary schools, parents demanded last night that the programs be preserved.Leaders of a group representing parents of about 3,000 students took issue with Superintendent Walter G. Amprey's plan to spread money for the programs, now spent only in the 51 schools, among all 120 elementary schools in the city.The proposal would kill gifted-and-talented programs, opponents told the school board, because schools couldn't afford the teachers' salaries.

I read Gina Eichman's letter praising parents' and teachers' commitment to their children's musical pursuits and in particular praising the efforts and ingenuity of the Howard County Gifted and Talented (GT) High School Orchestra. I second her praise and am an avid music supporter, as are my children. Unfortunately, the opportunity she references is not available to all young musicians in the county: Those students who attend private schools are prohibited from joining the county GT group.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening proposed yesterday spending $500,000 next year to help the state's schools do a better job of serving gifted students.The initiative, which the governor calls his "Excellence in Education" program, would help train teachers to better identify students who ought to be enrolled in gifted-and-talented programs and encourage school systems to develop more programs for those students.Glendening said he expected the amount devoted to the effort to double, to $1 million, the following year.

Baltimore County Public School's Citizens Advisory Group on Gifted and Talented education will host a panel discussion, "Life as a BCPS GT School Student," on Wednesday, March 7, at Cockeysville Middle School, 10401 Greenside Drive, from 7 to 9 p.m. Fourth- and fifth-grade elementary students will talk about their experiences as GT students, followed by a mixed middle and high school panel. Students on the panels come from Pot Spring and Padonia elementary schools; Hereford, Cockeysville and Franklin middle schools; and Carver, Dulaney, Hereford and Towson high schools.

Baltimore County schools' gifted-and-talented program is characterized by "flux, confusion and dissimilarity," and needs a major restructuring, says a team of independent consultants in a report released yesterday.Too many students are in the program for it to be truly considered a "gifted" group, and the quality of teachers and instruction varies greatly among schools, they said in a summary presented to the school board last night.The highly critical report is the latest flash point in a controversy that has simmered for at least three years, since Superintendent Stuart Berger announced he would review the oft-heralded program with an eye toward making it "more inclusive" and, thus, less elite.

One of the latest victims of the budget squeeze in Howard County is its vaunted gifted and talented program, which could see its purse cut by as much as 20 percent under School Superintendent Michael Hickey's spending plan.The proposed $500,000 in cuts to the gifted and talented program's $2.58 million budget include eliminating a dozen tTC teaching positions and cutting funds for teacher training, textbooks, supplies and after-school art, music and dance programs. The cuts could go much deeper if lawmakers in Annapolis pass a bill that would let counties reduce their mandated spending on schools this year.

"Enrichment Valley School" opened for learning Friday morning inside Bollman Bridge Elementary School, giving students a taste of the one-room schoolhouse of the 1940s.Three dozen fifth-graders in the Jessup school's gifted and talented program spent the day on lessons taken from 1942, working on penmanship, constructing Valentine's Day hearts for soldiers and diagramming sentences."It's been pretty fun, but I prefer '90s-style education to '40s-style education," said 10-year-old Sarah Tolliver who, like all other girls in the class that day, wore a dress in the style of the 1940s.

Many elementary students participating in Howard County's gifted-and-talented program are seeing substantial changes in the way they're receiving the enrichment activities this fall. For second-graders throughout the couch methods -- as under the previous version of the gifted-and-talented program.Instead, each school will identify students with different academic talents and design ways to teach to those pupils' particular strengths -- ways that are more closely linked to their regular classroom work.

Howard County's gifted and talented program for elementary school children will change next school year, when all schools will try a different way of teaching precocious pupils.The change involves the second grades in all elementary schools and all grades in six elementaries.Students no longer will be formally tested to be in the gifted and talented program, nor will they be pulled out of class to work on "Type II" projects intended to help them learn research methods and critical thinking skills.

The fourth annual Howard County Student Film Festival, created through the Howard County Public School System's Gifted and Talented Intern/Mentor Program, is seeking original film submissions from high school students from public and private schools in the county. The films must be 3 to 10 minutes in length, original and family friendly. For additional guidelines, see www.hocofilm festival.com. The deadline for submissions is Friday. Information: hocofilmfestival@gmail.com.

New rules on school gifted and talented programs approved today by the state board of education have drawn fire from a coalition of groups that say such programs harm poor and minority students. The critics, which include Casa de Maryland and the Montgomery County NAACP, argue that the very act of labeling some students and not others as gifted creates winners and losers, and that the principal victims of such inequality are African-Americans, Hispanics and students from low-income families.

A summer program that offers gifted students an opportunity to pursue such passions as building a robot, exploring the science of the Chesapeake Bay, playing jazz or learning the physics of solar power has been sliced out of Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget for 2010. The Maryland Summer Centers for Gifted Students have run for 42 years but will end after this summer if advocates for gifted students and their parents can't persuade the administration to restore the funding, about $413,000.

Schools real key to city's renewal In an article about the apparent demise of high-rise condominiums as Baltimore's economic development engine, I was pleased to see Richard Clinch of the University of Baltimore acknowledge the necessity of improving our public schools ("Project stall," April 27). Few residents of Baltimore would agree that building a high-rise condo across the street from their house is the key to renewing their neighborhood. Here at ground level, we know that an essential step in revitalizing a neighborhood is to establish a safe and healthy environment for youths and to demonstrate to prospective residents that their children can go to good public schools.

The fourth annual Howard County Student Film Festival, created through the Howard County Public School System's Gifted and Talented Intern/Mentor Program, is seeking original film submissions from high school students from public and private schools in the county. The films must be 3 to 10 minutes in length, original and family friendly. For additional guidelines, see www.hocofilm festival.com. The deadline for submissions is Friday. Information: hocofilmfestival@gmail.com.

Alexander Boser started reading at an early age and was devouring Harry Potter books by the time he was 4. "There really wasn't a sign of a problem except that this kid just wanted to read all the time," said his mother, Katharina Boser. But the youngster, now 10, has been diagnosed with attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder (ADHD). He gets anxious in school, is sensitive to criticism and has trouble memorizing facts, Boser said. Even though he is in a Gifted-and-Talented math class at his Ellicott City elementary school, he also has an individualized education program (IEP)

Bonnie Branch Middle School students David Friedman, Jake Miller and Tim Reagan share a love of baseball. The three friends not only play together, they also created a documentary on Jackie Robinson that will advance to the national level of the National History Day Competition, June 10-14, at the University of Maryland, College Park. The students presented their winning project Friday at Howard County's Middle School Student Achievement Expo. "We all have an interest in sports, and we've all played baseball, and we wanted a topic that we could relate to," Jake said.

When African-American teens from nine of the county's 11 high schools systematically stood up at a recent forum and outlined a disparity of minority representation in gifted-and-talented programs, their words - though impassioned - weren't shocking to school officials. "We have been around and around with the data for many years in terms of participation," said C. Thomas Payne, the school system's gifted-and-talented program coordinator. "For some reason, African-American students aren't performing at the high levels, and therefore they are not participating."

KEITH SMITH'S efforts to have Montel Williams, Rosie O'Donnell and Oprah Winfrey write letters on behalf of Anne Arundel County's gifted and talented program is pretty easy to dismiss.Why would County Executive John G. Gary or the school board pay any more attention to these afternoon television personalities than they would to parents who live and vote in the county?Mr. Smith, a former teacher of gifted and talented students, obviously is willing to try anything to revive this program, which was eliminated during this year's education budget slashing.

Rosemary Lather can't get enough of teaching music. The veteran educator, who plays violin, is orchestra director at River Hill and Marriotts Ridge high schools. But every Thursday, Lather adds a third orchestra, this one made up of middle-schoolers, to her teaching responsibilities. Since 1991, Lather has directed Howard County's Middle School Gifted and Talented Orchestra. The group attracts the best young strings players in the area. "I love high school, but it's very refreshing to still work with the middle-schoolers," Lather said.