Magnet Schools of America concerned about future of Wake's magnet program

Remember this. That is what it is now.

 Originally, the school system followed national research that said that there needs to be at most 40% low income students in the school, or there will not be enough parents with power to demand resources. This has nothing at all to do with kids. This is power politics of resources.

WCPSS Diversity Policy was to hold schools to 40% ED so that all schools had enough "not powerless" parents to demand resources.

The magnet programs were to attract high income kids to schools to balance this. To attract them, they provided enticements. They enticed them with very high quality resources.

This snowballed and took on a life of its own. They thrived on these high quality resources. (High quality resources created successful students.)

Some magnets were for "gifted" kids. The results of the high quality resources became a "magnet" for the elite. They all wanted their kids labeled "gifted."

"Gifted" is subjective. They use measurement things, but it is entirely subjective and you can bully your way to get your kid labeled. And you can bully your way to the resources.

 Now, we have the elite taking all the resources in as many schools as they can.

It wasn't intended to be this way. It just got out of control.

The Effectiveness Index smoothes it all over and makes it look okay. It adjusts expectations based on AG, income, & low income, etc. It makes it look like all is well. 

But not value all types of diversity. I think it is human nature to group with people of similar backgrounds and common interests. You cannot re-program a person to do otherwise. I had the unique experience of working with people of 11 countries, all spoke English and we all shared a similar job. We often travelled together without our families. We also all got along. However when left on our own we separated in groups of people, the groupings were very predictable. The countries were all European and North American.  This is similar in schools, has anyone watched the children when they play. They group, is that wrong or is it human nature. If you take children from two extreme backgrounds, they group to those extremes, what really is learned. What is learned is not necessarily positive. Sometimes the extreme diversity fosters racism and prejudice, especially in young children. Is this what we want. As I said before, I have had to re-program my children when they started grouping races with behaviour. I had to explain to them that it was a lack of good upbringing, not race that  caused that behaviour. In the same light, my children often come to me about how certain rich kids behave; I tell them the same thing. I have met many a person that was poor with fantastic character, and many that were rich with bad characters.  I tell my children to judge people by their character and avoid those with bad character; am I predudice?

  Diversity is sometimes a two-edged sword.

The hypocrisy is basically saying "Affluent Wake County children should go to school with poor Wake County children" when his own children aren't going to school with local poor children.

In other words, "I'm going to tell you what you should do, but I'm not going to do it myself."

Master race is how it is used and what it is doing in our educational system. The private schools don't have "gifted," because they would have to identify all kids as "gifted." It is not objective. Different school systems don't even honor each other's definitions. There was no such thing as gifted in schools until after schools were integrated and it was invented to segregate classes within schools. Do some research! You don't even know your educational history.

Of course, not all children are alike.  But the AG system as used in Wake County (and other places) has a number of serious problems.  First, it assumes as you seem to, that people are "gifted" or "not gifted".  In my teaching experience, this is not correct.  Even experts in the field of gifted education (who are clearly advocates of the idea of giftedness) recognize that there are various types of giftedness.  Wake County does, at least, differentiate between giftedness in math and in reading, but those are the only two areas they consider.  Other areas of strength such as foreign languages, the arts, and science are not included.  Students who are labelled as "gifted" are given an enhanced curriculum (at least in theory); those who are labelled as "not gifted" are not, even if they have areas of great strength.

Second, the method used to determine who is gifted is not very sound.  Research has shown that mass administered IQ tests such as the CogAT used by the WCPSS have been shown to be highly unreliable.  In addition, the use of a fairly low threshhold (the 90th percentile) is at variance with most of the literature I have read.  Experts in this field seem to use cutoffs of the 97th or 98th percentile.  That is one reason why the WCPSS has so many (24%) of its students in AG.  Finally, the subjectivity of the identification process used by the WCPSS calls it into question.  Although the schools seem to tell parents that the process is objective (75th percentile on the CogAT to take the ITBS, 90th percentile on the CogAT or ITBS to be AG), in actual practice the process is apparently much more subjective.  I understand that some schools do not even test all children and that other criteria are often ultimately added to the process of identification.  I also understand that it is difficult to get a child identified if he or she enters the system after the third grade. 

Once students are identified as "gifted", the enhanced curriculum they receive helps to ensure that they flourish.  The problem is that there is no way in the WCPSS to tell if this same enhanced curriculum would allow "not gifted" students to flourish.  There is a great deal of research that indicates that it would.  (This is often referred to as the "Pygmalion effect" or the "Matthew effect" if you want to read about it.  The former refers to studies that show that teachers who are told to expect a lot from students teach in such a way that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; even "average" students make great strides if expectations are high.  The latter refers to students who struggle early in reading.  As a result, they are frequently given less to read, not more, and fall further and further behind.)

I think this is an issue that deserves a lot more discussion and consideration.  We cannot assume that the current system is optimal.