This article jumped out to me as soon as I saw it on my desk. Since I am going into Special Education anything having to do with a learning disability or behavior disorder intrigues me right away. This mother in the article deals with a very hard subject for most educators to even talk about. A lot of money goes towards Special Education every year, and many people think that other parts of education should receive more money as well.
I agree with the mother when she states that maybe more money should be put into gifted education. Not enough is done to help out the students who fall into the gifted education program. She talks about her daughter who "hides a book in her desk and reads while the teacher talks." I think that the daughter in this situation is not being stimulated at all. I think that yes the school could put more money in their gifted and talented program, but also I think that the teacher needs to make sure that she is stimulating all of the students in the classroom. The mother states that only 7.5 million dollars are put into grants for gifted education programs, compared to the 24.5 billion dollars that are allotted by NCLB for Special Education. Although I do believe that more money needs to be put into gifted education, I don't think that taking a lot of money away from Special Education is the way to do it. The money that is put into Special Education is all ready being stretched out throughout the schools and districts. And, if more money is going to be put towards gifted education I think that we must also put more money into the arts as well, because those subjects in the schools are also lacking in money to build the systems. I think that the overall distribution of money into schools needs to be reexamined.
The mother who writes this article also talks about how the goals for Special Education students are a lot lower than those goals of students who take part in gifted and talented programs. Although this is true, I think that we as educators cannot say that just because the goals of some students are lower than others they do not deserve the right to all of the federal money that they are given. The Special Education systems have been helping out even more students now that they get more funding from NCLB, and numbers are rising of students who receive help and are now meeting standards that would not be possible to do without that extra money they receive.
Overall, I think this a hard position to be in. Whenever money is involved it is not easy to pick where it should go. It is hard to decide which group of individuals need/deserve the money more. I feel as though more money needs to be given to gifted and talented programs, but money should not be taken away from Special Education in order to do it, but this could definitely be my bias as I am going to be a Special Education teacher.
I believe you may be a little bias el, but I do agree with most of what you are saying! Gifted and talented children do need more money sent their way, but it does not need to be taken from the special education area. Although if there is a lot of money there and gifted and talented children need it then it should be taken from them because they need to make the money equal. I am not going against special education, but the money really needs to be equal. Both areas of students need to develop fully. Without the money for gifted and talented students they can not fully develop their intelligences!
ReplyDeleteElllll- I agree with you and the difficulty of this position. I think that gifted students should have money to be challenged and to allow them to learn more, but I do agree that the money should not be taken from the special education children. As this mother, it would be very challenging to have two such diverse children.
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