Virginia Public Education is on the verge of eliminating one of its best kept secrets: differentiated learning opportunities for students who like school! If you think for one minute that local schools and school boards are going to protect gifted initiatives and programs on their own volition, you don't know human and organizational nature. We are sensitive about taking care of "special" needs. We are sensitive about providing good sports programs and extracurricular activities. We are sensitive about  minority and multicultural programs and needs. But when it comes to gifted programs--we view them as optional and expendable and somehow elitist. The latter view, I fear is what is at work with these pending changes.

Gifted children have special needs just like other kids; only, they need an enhanced educational experience beyond normal standards. They need educational services delivered in non-tradtional  classroom ways. Why? Because they are just as different as those with handicaps, or socio-economic risk factors, or skin color, or even ethnic backgrounds. They have minds that need feeding and nurturing and cultivating because they have been given gifts.This is simple fact!

Up until now the State of Virginia has been wise in regulating gifted programs; it has been savvy in mandating plans and plan updates with teeth and standards; it has been prudent in fencing funds--minimal funding--to support, at least to a minimal level of effort , the needs of gifted children. At least , in the past, we have had some level of accountability to ensure an effort was made. Now, all of this is at risk because of the pending deregulation. Have we  not already learned what happens in other sectors of our society when we do away with prudent regulation? Do we not know what is going to happen if we turn this important initiative over to local option and not mandate minimum standards and resourcing? Do we not want to give our gifted kids the support they need to achieve their potential? Are we going to be blind and allow ourselves to fall behind in this key area--the education of your young for tomorrow--as we have in other areas of our national life?

Please reconsider this pending action! Get beyond the politics of the moment and look down the road at the lives that won't be touched in an important, formative way.  These kids will be put back into the mainstream with little motivation and incentive for lack of challenge. Their grades will come too easily. Gifted kids need the rigor, the challenge, and  the pushing to achieve potential that falls outside the normal range for public education. This requirement needs vigilant attention. Only the state of Virginia can do this, not scores of local school boards.