those troublesome outliers

This September our site is designating all 6th grade classes as gifted classes with 30% of the kids being designated as gifted. Eliminating tracking is the idea, and the hope is to create a culture of rigor and high achievement and lose any notions that there are smart or dumb classes. All students will receive GATE curriculum. Only the seminar kids--the mega-gifted, if you will--will remain in a separate class.

Love the theory; excited to see it tested at our school.

But this kinda raises a question in my lil punkin head: why were GATE classes started to begin with?

(Upon reflection, this raises tons of questions. I need a bigger head.)