State BOE Issues Opinion in Elem. Accelerated Math Appeal, Tells MCPS Parent Go to Circuit Court for MPIA and to DOE for FERPA Complaints

  Philip P. Opin. No.14-39 MD State Board of Education by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland

Inside Ed: Fordham report on tracking provides surprise results

"The Fordham Foundation has once again provided a provocative report, this time on tracking in Massachusetts middle schools.

Tom Loveless, the researcher, looked at achievement in the middle schools and found that the schools that had more tracking had a higher percentage of high-level math students. But the tracks just aren't good the high achievers. The lower achievers also did better..." continues here with link to Fordham Foundation report.

Trends in the performance of students scoring “advanced” on 6th grade MSAs

With an abundance of caution, and the proviso that MCPS has a data warehouse that should better answer the question, I draw your attention to the trends in students performing "Advanced" on the MSAs.

Are the numbers of students scoring "Advanced" on MSAs in 6^th grade showing a declining trend?

The data in one column is for a "non-magnet" middle school while the data in the other is for a "magnet" middle school. Both show the beginnings of a downward trend. The fact that a number of disparate schools display this trend should be of concern to Carver.

Is this a consequence of an ill thought out differentiated instruction experiment?

Or, could it be because the number of "Superintendent, Deputy, Assc, Asst" went up from FY 08 to FY 09 while the number of "Teachers" went down from 10261.4 in FY 08 to 10219.8 in FY 09?

Should our priority be teachers or administrators? Established teaching practices or experimental efforts?

Gifted and Talented Girls

Remember those words that once tore through your heart and evoked unquenchable emotion? "But it's the same with all my friends, just fun and joking, nothing more. I can never bring myself to talk of anything outside the common round.... Hence, this diary.... I want this diary itself to be my friend." They were penned by a gifted young girl—Anne Frank. Once let in, those words ricochet through your soul, it seems, forever. The words transcend the boundaries of language, race, color, and creed. Is it right, may I respectfully ask, to pretend that such talent doesn't exist?

In his book, Alpha Girls, Dan Kindlon, a clinical and research psychologist at Harvard, quotes Simone de Beauvoir: "If a caste is kept in a sense of inferiority, no doubt it remains inferior; but liberty can break the cycle. Let the Negroes vote and they become worthy of having the vote; let woman be given responsibilities and she is able to assume them. The fact is that oppressors cannot be expected to make a move of gratuitous generosity; but at one time the revolt of the oppressed, at another time the very evolution of the privileged caste itself, creates new situations; thus men have been led, in their own interest, to give partial emancipation to women: it remains only for women to continue their ascent, and the successes they are obtaining are an encouragement for them to do so. It seems almost certain that sooner or later they will arrive at complete economic and social economic equality, which will bring about an inner metamorphosis."

If nothing else, recent events are a powerful indicator that the inner metamorphosis has occurred. The Baltimore Sun reported "Carol W. Greider, who on Monday became the 33rd person associated with the Johns Hopkins University to win the Nobel Prize, is a triathlete, a mother of two and a methodical and modest genetic researcher who colleagues say shuns publicity in favor of pursuing her passion: fundamental, curiosity-driven science." Sharing the prize was Elizabeth Blackburn, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco and Jack Szostak of Harvard. According to the paper, the Nobel Committee made history by awarding the prize to more than one woman.

The Chicago Tribune draws our attention to a little known fact: laureate Blackburn was an alumnus of Joe Gall's laboratory at Yale University, "which had gained a reputation as one of the few places where a female postdoctoral student could do more than wash the Petri dishes." Blackburn, in turn, mentored other women and a revolution continued. Ms. de Beauvoir was right.

That is not to minimize the unique difficulties gifted girls may face in classrooms across the nation. Joan Franklin Smutny, in Understanding Our Gifted, Winter 1999 Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 9-13, states "Gifted girls often face a range of social pressures in schools, causing them to shift priorities. In an accepting home environment, they may have felt free to be themselves, to pursue with energy and interest any subject that intrigued them. But in school, the desire for friends, a disinclination to stand out, fear of ridicule, along with the need for acceptance, often impel gifted girls to make their abilities appear ordinary or even nonexistent." Smutny continues, "Kerr (1994) observes: "A society that wastes female brilliance has made it the norm for gifted women to lead an average life, and gifted women have largely adapted to that norm" (p. 171). The subtle and not-so-subtle messages downplaying the value of female achievement often begin early and accumulate over time. By age 11, many gifted girls do not know they have talents. Others, who know, guard it as a well-kept secret. This means that the abilities they could use to develop their potential are instead wasted on adjusting others' expectations (Eby & Smutny, 1990)."

Others, like Linda Kreger Silverman, describe the exceptional moral sensitivity of gifted children: "Having observed the development of gifted children for over 35 years, I am continuously impressed by the moral sensitivity of this group."

Consequently, it is not a hypothetical argument to assert that by denying the existence of a gifted population, or insisting on preserving a label that has little association with being gifted and talented (GT), society may be doing irreparable harm to these talented and sensitive children—both emotionally and educationally.

I find Silverman to be especially apropos in stating that "In the substitution of a mosaic of talents for giftedness, we have lost the entire moral dimension of giftedness. Gifted individuals, because of their greater facility with abstract reasoning, have complex inner lives, early ethical concerns, and heightened awareness of the world. As we split our understanding of the interrelated intellectual/moral/emotional structure of giftedness into many fragmented talents, we risk creating more one-sided children. And as we place too much value on performance -- with competitions, media attention, external recognition and rewards -- we may be inadvertently teaching gifted children that they are valued only for what they do, instead of who they are in their totality." In the case of gifted girls, we may be denying them their total existence and being.

Remember in 2005, when the then president of a prestigious university, Lawrence H. Summers, famously "sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers?" What is true in Summers' comments, as reported by PBS, is that
"we do see gender disparity in the representation of young people among the highest performers on math achievement tests, standardized math achievement tests." It would be an interesting scientific experiment to follow the evolution of that disparity as more and more women take the stage that men once hogged, unencumbered by the stereotypes of a preceding generation.

Do I believe that such comments, however well-intentioned, have a negative impact on gifted girls? Well, at a recent event, I asked few. One looked at me with puzzlement, insisting dismissively "He needs to come to math class with me!" These gifted and talented girls don't seem to care if they are called "gifted." They are a secure, self-assured generation of girls who seem to take little umbrage at such unfortunate pronouncements. Is it possible that in the decade since Smutny wrote her paper some things have changed? God, I hope so.

Smutny also insists: "Gifted girls crave freedom. They long for someone to see who they are, open the often closed door of their minds and say, "Go, fly!" Since they cannot give themselves permission to fly, they need the aid of a discerning adult. For gifted girls, a sensitive, caring teacher may be all that stands between quiet resignation and the beginning of fulfillment of their potential. "

M. Katherine Gavin and Sally M. Reis, write in the Gifted Child Today Reader Series, that "The implications of these research results indicate that teachers need to recognize that all females are not alike and have different learning styles. They need to observe the females in their class and be especially aware of the needs of the talented females, some of whom may break the mold. They should provide some competitive, some cooperative, and some individual learning situations and allow choice whenever possible so as to maximize student interest and learning."

Sylvia Rimm, co-author of the The Rimm Report on How 1,000 Girls Became Successful Women, insists that among successful women, "Twenty-five percent skipped subjects and fifteen skipped at least one grade. Physicians, musicians, and artists had the most grade skippers." [Note: on page 110, the book expresses these facts in a slightly different fashion]

Gifted girls from minorities face even greater hurdles in having to shatter stereotypes, both inside and outside their community. Did you know that "A larger proportion of immigrant black high school graduates attend selective colleges and universities than either native black or white students in America, according to a study by sociologists at Johns Hopkins and Syracuse universities?" Gifted girls from minority communities enter college early and thirst for rigorous curricular choices.

In 2002, Sally M. Reis, in a piece titled Social and emotional issues faced by gifted girls in elementary and secondary school, writes "Kissane (1986) found that teachers are less accurate in nominating girls who are likely to do well on the quantitative subtest of the SAT than they were in naming boys who were likely to achieve a high score. Research also indicates that teachers like smart girls less than other students." Reis continues, "… even though teachers did not tend to engage in sex-role stereotyping in general, they did stereotype their best students in the area of mathematics, attributing characteristics such as volunteering answers, enjoyment of mathematics, and independence to males. Recent research has indicated that some teachers seem to expect less from females than they do from males, especially in regard to achievement in mathematics and science. Girls may internalize these lowered expectations very early in life."

Despite all the research, in the debate around GT, we find little, if any, reference to the needs of gifted girls. They don't even seem to be an avatar on the GT radar. Don't let these exceptional girls, who possess an "academic fearlessness and intellectual ability that will benefit their entire generation, become the invisible, the ignored, the forgotten few.

Gifted, is a bad word only when misused

According to the LSU biography, Dr. Martin Luther King, "[b]ecause of his high score on the college entrance examinations in his junior year of high school, he advanced to Morehouse College without formal graduation from Booker T. Washington. Having skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades, Dr. King entered Morehouse at the age of fifteen." In 1964, this gifted young man went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yes, Dr. King was a gifted student who skipped grades. He would have been denied that opportunity had he been a student at MCPS. A website quotes an MCPS administrator as insisting, "The district's systemwide model for acceleration ensures that students can access an appropriate, above-grade-level curriculum every day without skipping a grade." I personally offered the administrator the opportunity to post her comments here and received no answer. Courageous conversations … .
In a review of a book on Lincoln, the New York Times wrote, "Having received almost no formal education, Lincoln embarked on a quest for learning and self-improvement. He read incessantly, beginning as a youth with the Bible and Shakespeare. During his single term in the House of Representatives, his colleagues considered it humorous that Lincoln spent his spare time poring over books in the Library of Congress. The result of this ''stunning work of self-education'' was the ''intellectual power'' revealed in Lincoln's writings and speeches. He relied, [the author] notes, on in-depth research and logical argument to persuade his listeners rather than oratorical flights." In Montgomery County, the AEI Advisory Committee, presently revising the gifted and talented policy, cares for neither. To quote the Committee notes, "One Board member asked what research the committee had conducted in preparation for policy revision. Members were silent." Yes, Lincoln wouldn't have felt at home with the MCPS AEI Committee.

“Academic fearlessness and intellectual ability that will benefit their entire generation”

Yesterday, Johns Hopkins University hosted a ceremony honoring "elementary-and middle school students from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington D.C. who distinguished themselves through special testing as among the most academically gifted young students in the country."


The deliberately blurred photo is testimony to the fact that the "best of the brightest," hail from a spectrum of races. Every color and community, it seems, graced that stage.

In a statement to the Press, JHU stated, "With our annual award ceremonies, we're committed to giving these exceptional young people a stage on which to recognize their academic achievements, just as we celebrate achievements in athletics or the performing arts," said CTY executive director Lea Ybarra. "Their performance places them in the top tier of students taking these tests, and they certainly deserve acclaim." Who gets the credit for success? "The students," said Dr. Ybarra. "They possess an academic fearlessness and intellectual ability that will benefit their entire generation."

In Montgomery County, we select students "ready to work above grade level," label them "gifted," and incessantly argue about gifted and talented education. How many of our bright minds are being denied the opportunities they deserve by the absence of a robust, rigorous, gifted and talented program?

To our kids, who continue to surmount the challenges that adults throw in their path with "an academic fearlessness and intellectual ability that will benefit their entire generation," we should offer our accolades. Congratulations!

The Harvard Razzmatazz about MCPS

Pick an author who serves on the Board of Directors of a company that has an economic relationship with a school system, a willingness to base a book on email messages and classroom notes as primary sources, and you have Harvard’s razzmatazz “Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools.”

The book fails to recognize the most significant elements that contribute to the success of MCPS: Principals, teachers, parents, and our children.

Montgomery County is a community that boasts a well-educated, wealthy populace. The natural consequence is that a significant proportion of our children will be academically well prepared. Furthermore, with a projected 2010 budget of over 2 BILLION, the school system has to attract the best and the brightest teachers and principals. Indeed, if the system was unable to attract the best and the brightest, with all factors conspiring in its favor, one would have to lay the blame squarely at the foot of Carver (school headquarters).

If you have ever visited your child’s school during an open house, you would have come face-to-face with teachers who captivate our children with their dedication, ebullience, and ability. There are school leaders who step up to do the right thing, and have quietly raised their school performance to new heights. They make decisions not based on race, color, or creed, but on pure educational merit. I feel honored to walk among them, as would you. Sadly, the book slights these wonderful, hardworking people, who are the backbone of any success MCPS has achieved. The book has nary a mention of these professionals.

Instead, Carver unleashed a flurry of emails and phone calls that form the backbone of the book. Take page 114, paragraph 2, where the book quotes “one African American administrator” and you will find no source attributed. Previously, on page 109, you will be treated to a claim that “[t]here was powerful evidence that gap closing strategies not only existed, but worked in red zone schools.” Follow the reference to the quote (Chapter 5, reference 13) and you will find the following “Donna Hollingshead, email message to author, November 11, 2008.” Ms. Hollingshead works for Dr. Frieda Lacey, Deputy Superintendent.

Stay on that page of references (page 173), and look at reference 10, which states “Anonymous superintendent’s email to author, November 11, 2008.” Reference 8, states “Jody Leleck, email message to author, November 18, 2008.” Jody Leleck, is the Associate Superintendent, Office of Curriculum and Instructional Programs.

At the top of the page (173), you will find reference 2, associated with chapter 5: “Stacey, Childress, “Wireless Generation,” Case 9-307-049 (Boston: Harvard Business School, 2008), 6.” Of course, the Wireless Generation website, confirms Ms. Childress is on their Board (the company made the announcement on October 1, 2008)

Clearly, Harvard didn’t feel that a book purportedly assessing a school system should be based on an analysis of data, and the “comparative data of competitors and comparable benchmarks of other organizations.” That last pearl of wisdom comes from the 2006 Baldrige assessment of MCPS.

The Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence, the book asserts, was used for “district self-assessment” (page 95). Little mention is made of the January 22, 2007, memorandum to the BOE that contained the 2006 Feedback Report from the Baldrige examiners.

The Baldrige report asserts what I have argued all along. To quote but a few highlights:

• “Although comparative data of competitors and comparable benchmarks of other organizations is available from several sources (other state school districts, APQC, private industry data), for some measures, projected performance is rarely used to compare organizational performance with these sources or with other key benchmarks. There is also not a systematic approach to close gaps in performance compared to benchmarks. Without this analysis of data, it may be more difficult for MCPS to plan for and address key challenges.”

• “Although the cost-per-pupil is the highest in the state and MCPS provided segmented results that demonstrated greater revenue per pupil than state and national averages, there are no measures, levels, or trends that reflect how effectively the additional resources are used or what results differentiate MCPS from less wealthy districts. For example, the cost-per-pupil is the highest in the state, but information on how the students and stakeholders benefit from this greater investment in the district is not provided.”

• Turnover demonstrates variable-to-less-than-favorable trends for Total Administrators, Principals, Assistant Principals, Support Student Specialists, teachers, Support Services, Para Educators between 2002-2005".

Harvard’s piece of scholarship fails to live up to the Baldrige standards of excellence the authors seek to embrace.

The book is not without nuggets of information that will make you sit up and take notice. There was that story (Page 90, paragraph 2) about negotiations with Lockheed for a video game for teachers to deal with “high-risk professional tasks” such as teaching our children ALGEBRA. On page 102, the authors allege that “the target for Kindergarten reading in 2008 “text level four” which had been painstakingly negotiated with MCEA and MCAASP.” I just can’t bring myself to say what I truly feel.

The authors fall prey to their lack of research with the claim “With the goal of refining and creating strategies to close the achievement gap, the district decided to look at whether or not the students’ MAP-R scores would help principals and teachers identify students at risk of not performing well on state assessments.” According to the book, the district then had one of Oprah’s “Aha! Moments,” when it discovered that MAP-R could indeed predict MSA performance. I suppose it would have been less dramatic, and cost less to go over to the MAP-R site (to the NWEA scale alignment studies page) and download the Maryland Alignment report.

Jody Leleck, in the previous capacity as the principal of Broad Acres ES, is credited with a remarkable turnaround of the school, with a “remarkable performance gain—proficiency levels in grade 3 increasing from 13 percent to 75 percent in reading and from 5 percent to 67 percent in mathematics” (page 113, paragraph 3). The Broad Acres grade-three MSA performance figures, freely available to the public, speak for themselves.

The 2006 Baldrige report stated “MCPS does not currently have measures for the effectiveness of key learning-centered processes, such as curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The development and use of measures for the determination of key learning-centered processes may enable MCPS to achieve better performance, not only providing better educational value for the students, but also better operational performance from the perspective of MCPS's stakeholders.” Did Harvard independently determine if progress had been made under Leleck’s leadership of the Office of Curriculum and Instructional Programs? The book is dismally silent.

Chapter 6, includes a disclaimer (page 173, reference 1) that it “draws heavily on two cases written by Karen Mapp, David Thomas, and Tonika Cheek Clayton … ,” i.e., the “case studies” (see here and here) that are “… not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.” The second reference in that chapter is another set of notes for class discussion (see here).

Scant attention is paid to the reality that the MCPS graduation rates had fallen to a new low. An extremely rudimentary analysis by this author predicted the fall, and one wonders why Harvard, apparently privy to the MCPS data, failed to detect this trend.

One of the coauthors, Denis Doyle, states on his blog: “Making the point that even inspired leaders are human -- which is to say not error-free -- the story of Montgomery CO is not without its mistakes. The one I would highlight was the decision to develop IT infrastructure in-house. … Put bluntly, Montgomery CO has as much business developing its own IT infrastructure as it would building its own bus fleet. … Am I a party at interest? In as sense, but for a defensible reason. I co-founded an education IT firm precisely because it makes no sense for the nation’s 15,000 school districts to design and build their own IT; certainly no more sense than 50 sets of math and English standards rather than one set of national standards. ” Mr. Doyle highlights a fatal flaw of the book when he pinpoints an error related to his field of expertise. The book sorely needed the contribution of those capable of analyzing data and reaching defensible conclusions.

Meanwhile, I am left with a plethora of questions. Do the reading standards of the software that Ms. Childress’ company hawks correlate to meaningful national standards? Did the authors measure progress over the years against established national norms? Did the authors bother to check if the standards of instruction in any subject, not just math and English,correlate to meaningful standards? Did they note the woeful lack of instruction on the art of WRITING?

Then, there is gifted and talented education … More about that later.

The Case for Rigorous Curriculum Revision in Montgomery County

School	2005-2006 GT	2007 Math Adv	2007 Reading Adv
School A	80.4	45.8	47.5
School B	75.9	55.6	42.6
School C	69.4	59.6	40.4
School D	67.4	76.7	56.8
School E	62.1	57.1	39.1
School F	57.8	72.7	65.2

Reproduced on the left, is a table based on MCPS data, listing the six schools with the top GT identification rates in 2005-2006. Since this identification is based on Global Screening in second-grade, these students took the third grade MSAs, a State of Maryland assessment, the following academic year (2007). Based on mobility figures released by the school system, one can reasonably expect the third grade MSA results for the following year to correspond to roughly the same group of students.

It doesn't take a mathematics maven to reach a simple conclusion: schools that claim a large number of gifted and talented students don't necessarily produce the highest performers on the MSA tests.

According to the Harvard University Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), "MCPS was inspired by a case study on the New York City Police Department's Computerized Crime Comparison Statistics (ComStat). Based on ComStat, MCPS developed M-Stat, a process designed to—

• thoroughly analyze individual school and student data;
  
• consistently and continuously monitor the data;
  
• identify best practices; and
  
• create lasting systemic change."
  

Harvard goes on to say, "This process is intended to serve as a model and permeate every level of the school district, from—

• frank discourse among the executive leadership team and the superintendent; to
  
• open discussion among principals and their supervising community superintendents; to
  
• honest examination of the school data between principals and their communities; to
  
• authentic conversations among teachers and the principal; to
  
• the nexus of true school reform—the interactions between the students and the teacher." [underlining mine]
  

Somehow, the expensive M-Stat system failed to achieve its stated goals. An "honest examination of school data" is next to impossible given the reticence of the school system to release its data (a Public Information Act request for data is still pending—approximately six-months after submission).

It is no secret that the Montgomery County school system subscribes to a dismally low threshold for the identification of the gifted and talented: the 75^th percentile rank in Raven (see here), when Renzulli, whose methodology is embraced by the school system, recommends percentiles in the ~90s. An "honest examination of school data," would have alerted even the most somnambulant dilettante that something was awry in our fair county. According to the Examiner's Leah Fabel, Marty Creel, the County's director of gifted and talented programming had insisted "We're not identifying these kids as geniuses, but as ready to work above grade level," adding that "the county has made remarkable progress in getting students to that mark."

The County School system, in the latest incarnation of its Strategic Plan, on page 12, reasserts its goal of providing "an Effective Instructional Program." If a system-wide average of 40.7% of students were performing at an above-grade level in 2005-2206 (according to MCPS data), the natural response would have been to recognize that nearly half the student body would find the established curriculum lacked rigor and challenge. The consequence should have been a roll-out of a much more rigorous, "effective instructional program." Not so in Montgomery County, we are middling through a curriculum that the school system admits isn't challenging for nearly half our kids.

Isn't Mr. Creel tacitly drawing attention to the reality that school administrators have failed to adequately respond to the curricular needs of our children? The school system graduation rate has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, to 11^th among Maryland's school divisions. Again, aren't we seeing the tangible consequences of a failure to implement an "effective instructional program?"

The oft repeated mantra that the school system has somehow been focused on addressing the achievement of minorities is also not holding true. According to the Washington Post, "there is less attention paid to some more traditional measures of educational accomplishment, such as taking the SAT and receiving a diploma. On those measures, the achievement gap has not narrowed but widened.

Graduation rates are lower for blacks (84 percent) and Hispanics (78 percent) than for whites and Asians (95 percent). The disparity is larger now than five years ago. " This for a school system, that boasted the highest expenditure per pupil in the State of Maryland (according to 2007 MSDE data).

In Harvard's RAISING ACHIEVEMENT AND CLOSING GAPS IN WHOLE SCHOOL SYSTEMS: RECENT ADVANCES IN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, on page 38, one finds the statement "Deputy Superintendent Lacey responded that Dr. Weast drives the district's approach: 'He is not afraid to be honest; he is not afraid to disclose data;'" which makes the district's refusal to release data all the more inexplicable.

LEA Name	Wealth Per Pupil	Expenditures Per Pupil	Instruction Staff Per Thousand	Prof Support Staff Per Thousand	Instruction Assist Per Thousand
Montgomery	490607	12647	70.5	12	16.3
Worcester	757781	11907	84.2	11.8	28.4
Somerset	193971	11308	80.8	10.9	21.5
Howard	372982	11232	73.4	12.4	24.2
Kent	404349	11105	75.6	10.8	19.5
Dorchester	250094	11004	74.1	11.6	12.6
Baltimore City	170179	10974	72	13.3	19.8
All Public Schools	318810	10371	69.6	11.3	15.3
Baltimore County	337668	10079	71.6	11.7	10.1
Allegany	189864	10063	78.3	13.1	19.7
Anne Arundel	402415	9814	67.9	11.1	12.4
Garrett	294643	9800	78.6	8.9	16.9
Calvert	281699	9745	61.3	9.8	19.3
Prince George's	235209	9699	68	11.1	11.6
Talbot	645227	9697	68.3	10.7	7.9
Wicomico	216405	9692	75.9	10.4	29.1
Cecil	241918	9402	70.4	10.5	14.4
Carroll	272870	9278	68.6	11.1	12.4
Frederick	277483	9267	65.2	9.8	14.8
Saint Mary's	255632	9263	61.5	10	15
Charles	250746	9246	62.4	9.9	14.2
Queen Anne's	366636	9213	64.4	8.9	13.5
Washington	250893	9127	67.5	9.4	11.9
Harford	267832	9104	70	10.1	16.8
Caroline	190934	9035	69	10.7	18.9
Baltimore City - Edison			55	4.8	32.3

It is my belief that Montgomery County needs a rigorous, challenging curriculum revision, preceded by a honest, open, dialogue with all stakeholders—not just a chosen few. By stating that the revision process itself must be rigorous and challenging, I am asserting, among other things, the need for a well researched, carefully articulated revision process that must overcome the tough challenges it will necessarily face. Part and parcel of this revision must be the implementation of an effective gifted and talented identification system commensurate with established standards and norms. Furthermore, the programs for all learners, exceptionally advanced learners included, must be explicitly stated and publicly available.

Harvard University can contribute to the conversation (1) by accepting my invitation to provide the data, on which they base their assessments of MY school system, and (2) undertaking rigorous studies of educational systems with an independent, peer-reviewed analysis rather than simply reproducing the claims of school systems and their surrogates.