Preaching to the GT( Gifted and Talented) Choir

Published in TEMPO Magazine, Feb. 2009

Preaching to the GT Choir

By Dick Kantenberger

Texas Teacher Certified in Secondary and Elementary Mathematics and Science, Physics, Special Education and Gifted and Talented

Member, Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented

We love to talk about GT and giftedness. We love talk to each other about it by the hour. We go to seminars and talk and listen all day about GT and sometimes several days at a time. We read and write books and articles about giftedness primarily aimed at other people in GT and to the students and parents of gifted or potentially gifted children. There is nothing wrong with these things at all. First, we enjoy talking about GT because we are very interested it, and second, there are many students and parents that need the help that gifted and talented education can give them. But if we are going to broaden the support for gifted and talented education in this country, we are going to have to broaden our message.

Look what Special Education has been able to accomplish. But how long did it take them? Both GT and Special Ed have been studied in academia for about 40 years prior to World War II, but after the war special education grassroots advocacy organizations began to spring up, like the American Association on Mental Deficiency, United Cerebral Palsy Association and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Then in the sixties an increasing level of school access was established for children with disabilities at the state and local levels.

The grassroots advocacy for Special Education began to swell as Congress approved Public Law 94-142 “Education for All Handicapped Children Act” in 1975, but it did not prove effective until legislation for federal funding was approved two years later. It mandated that school districts provide such schooling in the “least restrictive environment” possible. But Special Education did not take off until 1990 with the passage of “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” (IDEA). Before IDEA, the condition of Special Education in this country was pretty bleak. In 1970, American schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws that excluded children with major disabilities like deafness, blindness and mental retardation. There is no doubt that Special Education programs have helped a great number of students assimilate into the public education system. However, 80% of students in Special Education are there because of weak underlying cognitive skills according to LearningRx. Therefore, identifying and retraining these cognitive skills is essential for over coming learning struggles on a permanent basis.

The goals of Gifted and Talented education are to identify and train the cognitive skills of gifted students whose vulnerability is such that it is estimated we are losing about a million kids a year because the public and the state and federal politicians still mostly have the misconception that if a child is gifted then “don’t worry about it, s/he is bound to turn out OK”

Unless we want to wait another forty years, it seems to me our goal is clear. As much as we love talking about GT among ourselves, we must accelerate the GT grassroots ground-swell by directing our message to the general public and especially to our state and federal legislators.

Currently we in Texas have almost as many identified gifted students as we have special education students (actually it is 1 to 1.4), but in public education we spend 11 times more on Special Education than GT. Sadly that number is pretty good compared to the national average where Special Ed out-spends GT by over 100 to 1. That’s because many states spend virtually nothing on GT. But even our 11 to 1 ratio is not all that noteworthy because a handful of school districts are spending most of the money while most school districts are spending little or nothing. My own affluent school district is spending 43 times as much on Special Ed as GT. Go into any public school in the country and you will find twenty or so Special Ed teachers for every one (or none) GT teacher.

We in GT education are the “tree-trucks” of our movement. However, we need many “leaves” on our “trees”. The “leaves” we need, if we are to accomplish our goals, are the support of the general public and the state and federal legislators. Tree-trucks can not grow many leaves on their own, so we all need to make a concerted effort over a period of time to grow many “limbs” which can in turn grow many “leaves”. This means that since we are small in numbers we all have to take a pro-active role in educating all of our non-GT teachers, councilors, principals, and the parents of our GT children. So, all of us need to contact the general public and the state and federal governments, especially the state legislators. With a new Congress in Washington DC and a new

Legislation in Austin, there is no better time to get our message to these very important people. What can we do?

a] Most important is to contact your own state senators and representatives via personal contact, telephone, letter, fax, or e-mail and ask them to specifically support Gifted and Talented education by passing and funding legislation to 1] require state certification exams of Gifted and Talented teachers, and 2] that all identified Gifted and Talented students be taught by state certified Gifted and Talented teachers. 3] Place an emphasis on finding these gifted kids at the beginning of elementary school. BE SURE TO ALWAYS ASK FOR THESE SPECIFIC ACTIONS. To find all of your legislators click on: http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=17173, then [1st] select your “State” and [2nd] select “Legislator”, then click on “Legislature Links”. There you will find all the senators and representatives and their addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail links.

b] Contact your local school district superintendent and request these same actions.

c] Write to your local newspaper education reporters, and letters-to-the-editor expressing your concerns about gifted education. Many specific GT concerns can be found on http://ednews.org/articles/25922/1/

d] Call local radio talk-shows to express your concerns.

e] For more detailed help contact the National Association for Gifted Children at http://www.nagc.org and click on “Advocacy & Legislation”, then “Toolkit”. Also contact your state Gifted and Talent organization at this same web-site by clicking on “State by State”.

Be aware that a few individual names may be out of date, but you can Google your state association shown and find the latest contacts in your state. We need to do this now while all of these politicians are getting their agendas prioritized.

In order to get a gauge of what it was the lawmakers in Texas and in Washington thought about GT, the idea for this article started in April 2008 when I first sent a type written letter on my personal stationery to President Bush. I followed that up with same typed written letter only personally address to every federal lawmaker from Texas that represents my district in any way. I wrote the same thing to all of the top state lawmakers and many from other districts who are on various education committees in Austin. I got written responses from all the federal politicians except from the White House. Lt. Governor Dewhurst’s office called to ask me some questions. All the responses were very polite but each reflected only their own policies on education. None indicated any understanding of Gifted and Talented issues and only mentioned it as a throw-in phrase when talking about “No Child Left Behind”. However, the State Senator and the District State Representative in my own district, both wrote letters to Texas Education Agency asking them to respond to my letter. Both duly wrote me again afterward. But at least now they knew of the GT situation and they were now also aware of TEA’s current policy on it. Of course I was advised of the current state policy on education which I already knew. The salient result of this exercise was clear; that we will get more attention and involvement from the lawmakers in our own districts because… you guessed it… they need your vote. A few GT advocates, and that includes all GT teachers, administrator, parents and advocates, will only make but a very small impact. We need a broad “grass roots” advocacy. That is from where my ”tree” analogy was derived.

It will not be easy and we have a long way to go. From an early draft of this article, Roxanna Cramer wrote, “From another choir member: A good article, but unfortunately the timing is bad. G/T kids have never been sympathetic “poster children”, especially in comparison with handicapped kids. And in this time of economic downturn, chances of getting more attention focused on G/T kids is practically nil. Science and Math stand a chance, but no body can see the symphony uncomposed or the novel unwritten…” I found a 14 year old boy in ISS (In School Suspension) for refusing to do his class work. In talking with the boy and his father I found the kid read War and Peace when he was 10. He wants to be a writer and has taught himself Greek and Latin. I love Roxanna’s comment and I’m sure most Music and Language Arts teachers do too. We have a long way to go. From an Assistant Principal in my own district I received the following message “Why did you send me this obnoxious article?” From another “unsigned”, “ I didn’t realize that “gifted” meant being educational snobs” So you see, it will not be easy, however, that is no reason not to try, especially considering the value of the commodity we are dealing with.

In June 2008 I released my unacknowledged letter to President Bush as an open letter. I am the first to admit he had other very serious problems to deal with. It was published by Education News and is shown below.

The misunderstanding about Gifted and Talented issues is widespread. A public school administrator in Maryland said “three-fourths of all of our students are gifted”. Another, who I will identify as she posted this response on the internet is Jamie Ruppmann who wrote “I believe that all our children should be provided the support and education that they need. That is why I have spent many years as an educational advocate. I am always discouraged, then, when I read editorial offerings and letters suggesting that by addressing the needs of one group of youngsters, we are necessarily and inevitably short changing or harming another group. Child advocacy has never been and should not be some sort of competition for “our energy and resources”. In fact, our nation has the resources and energy it needs to put all children “first”. Unfortunately, Dick Kantenberger continues to insist that gifted children (and in my school district that is just about everyone) are worthy of the resources they need……” A bit more far out is an un-signed person in New Hampshire who said “Get the government out of education, they have no business”. I wonder who funds public education in New Hampshire!

There are many who do “get it”. From Kate Gladstone, “The educational system also tend to ignore and under-represent gifted/talents among those with disabilities of any sort (especially among the neurological disabilities) – see the work of Meredith Warshaw at www.hoagiesgifted.org/twice-exceptional.htm . Amen to this and Amen again. I taught all math courses from sixth-grade math through calculus at a well known psychiatric hospital for a year. Obviously all the students were special education, but I was surprised to find that 15%-20% of these kids were gifted too. This is three to four times what I had expected. This truly is an area that needs to be given much more study and research.

Bert Franks, MD in Dallas said “As a pediatrician I have advocated for years that we have terribly neglected the gifted students who come to me for poor performance because of boredom and not being challenged by the system or parents. The attitude of the cream rising to the top does not always hold true. These very bright kids are a major part of the future of our national growth”. Richard Olenchak, PhD at the University of Houston wrote “Keep up the good fight! This is the most dreadful catastrophe of American society; sacrificing our children’s talents”.

Ann Sheldon, Executive Director of the Ohio Association of Gifted Children about an article that I wrote in May 2008, Education’s Wag the Dog: Lost Geniuses,

www.ednews.org/articles/25922/1/.html . She wrote to me: “This article is a must read for every state lawmaker. We can not continue to be a world class country if we continue to ignore our most gifted future leaders”. She then sent a copy of the article to every GT teacher and lawmaker in the State of Ohio. The article has been reprinted with permission by Gifted and Talented organizations in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Mississippi, North Dakota and , I am told, by several other states.

It is clear that we in GT try to absorb everything we can GT. We spend a lot of time studying and talking to each other, but unless we intensify the spreading of our message, it may be another 40 years before our goals of GT are recognized and met. Do not assume that your principals, councilors, and other non-GT teachers really understand giftedness. Most do not. Some will tell you they do, but that usually does not go beyond understanding a few words, like the meaning of acceleration or asynchronous development, but they do not know the symptoms of identifying the hard to find kids in minority groups, the poor and even girls, and they do not know how to go about implementing the necessary curriculums for the students they do find. Thirty clock-hours on Saturday mornings alone with not do it. The principals and administrators don’t have or want to spend the money. That’s were Special Education was fifty years ago. We’d better get started now!

GT Bio 12-08:

Mr. Kantenberger is a 17 year teacher, baseball and tennis coach in Texas public schools. He was honored on Fox Sports (TV) Network as “Coach Who Makes a Difference”. Before education he owned his own businesses and had offices in Cairo, Johannesburg and Houston and was a Marketing Consultant to The Boeing Co. on projects in Saudi Arabia. He was a member of a U. S. Dept. of Commerce Trade Mission to West Africa. He was on the campaign committee that successfully made Dolph Briscoe (Dem) Governor of Texas and served on several campaigns for George H. W. Bush (Rep). He served on the Houston Grand Opera General Director’s Marketing Committee; was Chairman of the Speakers Bureau, Chairman of Arts Advocacy and Pre-curtain Lecturer as well as on the Board of HGO’s Opera Guild. He also served on the Boards of First Methodist Church in Houston, the Houston Tennis Association and the Spring Branch-Memorial Sports Association. A native Texan, he holds degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Houston and business administration from Southern Methodist University.

Dedication:

I would like to dedicate this article to Dr. Rick Olenchak, Professor, Psychologist and Director of the Urban Talent Research Institute at the University of Houston who first lit my GT fire and to Dr. Lynette Breedlove, Director, Advanced Academic Studies, Spring Branch ISD in Houston, who as my mentor cultivated it.