I am a veteran teacher with 18 years of teaching, 13 years
in 6th grade regular ed, science, math and social studies
and 5 years in 7th and 8th gifted math and social studies.
I am now exclusively in 7th grade social studies. I have
watched as NCLB has seriously impacted the gifted program
at my school. All the emphasis in NCLB is on the bottom of
the pile. All the smaller classes are focused on the
bottom of the pile. The middle learners, the majority of
the students we teach are packed into the largest classes,
receive much less intervention and extension in the
classroom and suffer under NCLB. The quality of middle
learner education has seriously eroded as the time goes by
with us strapped by NCLB.

At the top of the pile sre the gifted students, the
students with the most potential and the students who have
the best chance of being our movers and shakers in this
upcoming generation. All research shows that gifted
students need smaller classes where they receive continual
motivation, encouragement, correction, refocusing, and
original thinking time. In my state, Georgia, the class
limit for gifted used to be 21 students. In practice this
worked very well, giving the teacher the flexibility to
work individually with students in an environment conducive
to the learning potential of the students. Georgia, due to
the financial crisis we all face, increased the minimum
class size for gifted students to 23. My school district
took an even more dramatic approach. They eliminated the
minimum size for gifted classes. Some schools have chosen
to follow this standard, some have chosen 28 as a minimum,
and my school has decided upon 25 students. All of the
situations seriously impact gifted education and, in the
process, have reduced the level of service to gifted
students by their teachers. There is less time and
potential for individual extensions and remediation to
enhance the learning of highly intelligent students who
will potentially be our future business and political
leaders, our engineers, our scientists, our doctors and
nurses, and our artists. Why? All because of the emphasis
NCLB places on the bottom of the pile. One school in my
district has even eliminated gifted science completely,
while the current administration's priority in teaching is
science and math. How can that be justified by this school?

Gifted education is in serious peril as long as NCLB
exists, and regular ed students suffer even more as all the
emphasis is on testing, testing, and more testing. In
addition, the lock-step policies of schools to ensure that
specific information is taught at a specific time to match
the timing of the abhorent tests takes away all teacher
flexibility and innovation. NCLB must be eliminated and
the education community needs to come to its senses.

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