I f the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools face budget cuts next school year — an increasingly likely possibility — the Board of Education should choose to make cuts to the gifted education program at the elementary and middle school levels.
The board may ask county commissioners for more money in next year’s budget, but these extra funds are no guarantee. There is little doubt that teaching positions will need to be cut to accommodate this funding shortfall.
It makes sense to reduce the number of positions in the Academically or Intellectually Gifted Program, an option that is being discussed extensively by the board. In a best-case scenario, this would mean merely shifting faculty to different positions without firing anyone. Either way, the AIG program will be made smaller.
Parents of students in the program argue that their children would grow bored with school and become at risk for behavior problems. This argument holds little merit. At the elementary and middle school levels, the most important learning comes from forming a community in the classroom and interacting with other students .
When AIG students are pulled out of class to do advanced coursework in a small group, the benefits of exposure to more challenging assignments are not worth the loss in social cohesion that results from breaking up the class.
Furthermore, a study published last year indicates that urban middle school students who barely qualified for a gifted education program did not perform any better on tests after participation in the program than students who were similar academically but had just missed the threshold.
The primary goal at this age should be for students to become literate and proficient. Gifted learning programs are important but not essential.
