Letter to the Editor: Schools Must Create Higher Level Challenges for Students

By Dan and Betty Some | Published on 02.28.2010

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As the parents of GATE children ranging from college senior to sixth-grader, we would like to weigh in on the new secondary district Honors curriculum proposal.

Re-labeling courses for uniformity across subjects and schools is certainly useful, especially if the new labels guarantee that the highest level courses receive appropriate grading credit from colleges.

Whatever you call them, it is valuable to the academically gifted and talented children — as well as all the others — to have access to three tiers in the core academic subjects. Burdening teachers with juggling extra GATE activities for only some of the students in a class is unreasonable and creates the appearance of uneven treatment; it also is unfair to those who could benefit from the extra activities but are not tagged as GATE for whatever historical reasons. Differentiated instruction is a great concept that is extremely difficult to implement in a practical classroom setting with 30 or 40 students, each teacher seeing well over 100 students at any given time.

The current system, which certainly ought to be organized more uniformly, allows any student with suitable levels of capability and commitment to participate in the more-in-depth classes now labeled GATE. Rather than whining about “underrepresented minorities,” the schools should be allocating resources to identify and encourage those students across the spectrum, who are capable and committed, to take the highest level of classes they can. Not all GATE-identified students would benefit from the highest level in every core class, even though they are still suited to Honors-level courses, and appropriate counseling would help them select the right level. The highest tier should be presented as requiring the most effort and commitment on the part of the student.

Children consistently show that they rise to the level of challenge presented to them and our schools would do best to raise all bars, creating higher levels challenges, rather than reduce the levels. A single Honors level that includes 30 percent to 50 percent of all students in the school cannot create the in-depth learning environment that benefits the top 10 percent who are America’s future leaders and innovators.

Dan and Betty Some
Santa Barbara

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