Providing a high-quality education for all children is critical to America’s economic future. Education has always been the foundation for achieving the American dream, providing opportunity to millions of American families, newcomers, and immigrants. Our nation’s economic competitiveness depends on providing every child with an education that will enable them to compete in a global economy that is predicated on knowledge and innovation. Progress toward this goal requires a race to the top to reform our nation’s schools. It requires holding schools accountable for helping all students meet world-class standards aligned to the demands of the 21st century workforce.
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President Barack Obama
March 10, 2009
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7/21/2010 REVISED UPDATE -- Help Needed in Senate: If your Senator is on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor/HHS/Education, please contact him/her by 10:00 am on July 27 in support of $11.25 million for the Javits Gifted & Talented Students Education Act. Click here for more specific information and instructions. The original date was July 22. It has been postponed until July 27.
6/28/2010 UPDATE -- Your Help Needed: Equity in Excellence: Bill introduced in House of Representatives. Reps Payne (NJ-12), Guthrie (KY-2), and Polis (CO-2) introduced H.R. 5586, a bill to provide grants to school districts to close the achievement gap for high-ability students. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate (S.3086) by Sens. Dodd (CT) & Grassley (Iowa). Help us get more cosponsors for both bills. Click here for more information.
NAGC advocates in Congress and at the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of the gifted education community to increase federal support for gifted and talented learners. We hope that our members and other supporters will assist these efforts by communicating regularly with their Members of Congress on the needs of gifted students. We have prepared an advocacy toolkit to help you gather the information you need to make the case for gifted education; we also offer suggestions to help supporters be even more effective advocates at the federal, state, and local levels.
NAGC has also launched a new grassroots initiative -- where individual advocates will work directly with NAGC to educate Members of Congress on issues of concern to the gifted educatio
n community. We're calling this initiative the Legislative Action Network and we invite you to be part of it. Click here for more information.
111th Congress
The 111th Congress convened on January 6, 2009, and will continue for two years. New start, new Members, new staff. The 111th Congress has 54 freshmen Representatives and will have 15 new Senators (after all the vacancies are filled). New members mean new opportunities, but hard work for advocates. It's time to begin the rounds of introducing, or re-introducing ourselves to our Members of Congress and their staff , letting them know about the gifted students in their districts and states, and raising awareness of how federal legislation and funding can make a difference for them and for the nation. Visit www.house.gov and www.senate.gov for email addresses and other contact information for your Members of Congress. Consider making in-person visits to their district offices.
In most cases, the House and Senate committees on education handle the legislation of greatest interest to gifted education advocates. The appropriations committees handle all funding-related issues, which is where we focus on attention for the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act. Although it's important to reach out to all Members of Congress, we need to do even more with the men and women serving on these committees, and the specific subcommittees that handle education funding. Check the committee rosters to determine if your Members of Congress serve on one of them. If so, you know that it's especially important to begin early to develop a relationship with that office, and the staff person handling education issues.
As we move along in the 111th Congress, we carry over our concerns about funding the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act, and we will pursue changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, which the education committees will be considering during this two-year cycle. We also will be working with the U.S. Department of Education on the regulations to implement the changes made last year to the Higher Education Act that affect pre-service teacher preparation programs regarding gifted and talented children. Click here to read about the Higher Education Act legislative victory in the 110th Congress.
Legislative Proposals to amend Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA): Equity, Accountability, Innovation, and Teacher Effectiveness
The emphasis on growth [models to measure achievement of all students] will ensure that schools have an incentive to improve the academic performance of our
highest achieving students as well. Too often, gifted children aren’t challenged with the opportunities they need to succeed.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
Remarks at the Annual Convention of the Council for Exceptional Children
April 21, 2010
NAGC recently submitted its recommendations to Congress on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), formerly known as No Child Left Behind. Click here to read the recommendations.
Equity in Excellence
NAGC is especially pleased to be working with Senators Chris Dodd (CT) and Charles Grassley (Iowa) on new federal legislation that would address the achievement gap between advanced students who are disadvantaged and those who are not. The Senators introduced S.3086, which provides grants to Title I school districts to use gifted education interventions at the elementary school level to ensure that low-income, high-ability students receive the support they need to succeed. Click here for more information about S.3086.
Several studies in 2008 focused on the gap between low-income, advanced students and their more advantaged peers, which has been growing faster than the performance gap at the lower end of the achievement level. A recent report from Indiana University, Mind the (other) Gap, found that achievement gaps among high-ability students from different economic, racial, and linguistic backgrounds in the U.S. are large and growing. The two studies from 2008 to review on this topic are the Fordham Institute study of top performing students and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation 's Achievement Trap.
Teacher Effectiveness
NAGC is seeking changes in NCLB that will require states to describe how they will use federal professional development funds to improve the skills of teachers already in the classroom in instructing gifted and talented students. Click here to read more about this teacher effectiveness proposal. The proposal is the natural extension of prior successful efforts in the Higher Education Opportunities Act to increase what pre-service teachers learn about meetings the needs of gifted students. The Fordham Institute's 2008 teacher survey provides an update on what is happening (or not) for advanced students in classrooms across the U.S. Click here for the Fordham national teacher survey.
Accountability and Reporting
NAGC is seeking changes in NCLB's assessment and accountability system to ensure that schools are held accountable for improving the achievement of all students, including those performing at the "advanced" level. At the same time, NAGC is calling for changes in the state assessments so that gifted student performance on state tests can be pinpointed. Currently, gifted students reach the ceiling on state grade-level tests, which masks the students' true performance. Click here to read more about NAGC's accountability proposal. NAGC made recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education on what it should include in assessment reforms that the Department is funding. Click here to read NAGC's assessment recommendations.
Research and Innovation
NAGC is urging Congress to retain a national research center, grants, and the federal role of disseminatiing "best practices" research in the revised ESEA to help school disrricts better understand how to recognize and maximize the potential of high-ability students as well as to disseminate the findings so that districts, states, and families are able to make appropriate decisions about services for advanced students. Click here for more information on this initiative.
Click here to read NAGC's testimony to the U.S. Department of Education about issues of concern as the Department moves ahead on providing grant funds to states on the next generation of state assessments.
President's "blueprint" for ESEA Reauthorization
President Obama's proposal for federal K-12 education reform is outlined in a 40-page document called A Blueprint for Reform but offers few details on how the changes called for would be designed and implemented. For gifted education advocates, the Blueprint provides a mixed picture: the Javits Gifted & Talented Students Education Act would be combined with Advanced Placement and School Dropout Reform into a single grant program (similar to the President's fiscal year 2011 budget request), which if adopted, would essentially end the Javits program in its current configuration of research and demonstration grants plus the National Research Center. However, the Blueprint also includes a one-line statement that more elementary and middle school students need access to gifted and talented education. This may be the first time in decades that a president has specifically called on Congress to address the needs of gifted students. Click here to read NAGC's response.
Funding for the Javits Gifted & Talented Students Education Act
Advocates are working to secure $11.25 million for the Javits Act in fiscal year 2011. The program is currently funded at $7.46 million, the same level as the program received in 2009, which is sufficient to continue the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented as well as to continue the competitive grants that are in process. There is not enough money, however, to provide for statewide grants. We would not have had this success without the consistent efforts of advocates around the country. Your work over the years to educate Members of Congress has resulted in new supporters who see the value in retaining the sole federal program addressing the needs of gifted learners. Your efforts also confirm that Congress does respond to constituents. We have more work to do to expand our support, but we have an excellent foundation for future action.
Thanks to the hard work of advocates from across the country, 50 Representatives and 15 Senators co-signed "Dear Colleague" letters to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees requesting $11.25 million in fiscal year 2011 for the Javits program. Click here to read the House and Senate "Dear Colleague" letters. The next step will be for the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Labor-Health & Human Services-Education to approve bills that include all the details of federal spending for programs and services in the agencies they oversee and to pass the bills along to the full Appropriations Committees. The Constitution requires that the House act first on spending bills; we can expect that the House committees wil consider the legislation in May. The fiscal year begins on October 1; Congress will likely not complete the appropriations process before then.
Please check back here for more information as the process moves along this year.
Continuing Communication with Congress
In order to increase our support in Washington, we must do more during the year to keep Members of Congress apprised of the need for, and value of gifted education programs and services. Not only do they need to hear your stories, they also need to understand that the availability of services for gifted students varies widely between and within states, which in turn leads to huge gaps in how far our brightest students can go. Leadership from the federal government could make a difference to ensuring that high-ability students from every background receive the services they need to reach their full potential.
Check out some of the materials in the advocacy toolkit to help you develop letters-to-the-editor of your local paper. Members of Congress all pay close attention to the issues that appear locally, so this is a great place to begin.
Please visit this space regularly. We' are rolling up our sleeves to work on a range of issues. Please join us!