Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
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INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF January 2005 Policy Brief # 7 Investing in Advanced Learners Dr. Linda Forsyth Weidenhamer ISPU Fellow It is urgent for policymakers to understand 1980s that America’s successes in why they must immediately retool and scientific achievement were heavily generously fund state and national dependent upon foreigners who studied at It is urgent for education policies to find and develop American universities, then remained and policymakers to America’s gifted and advanced learners. worked in the United States. understand why they must immediately THE PROBLEM: Critical Newsweek magazine’s Fareed Zakaria retool and generously Underinvestment in Gifted and called this phenomenon “the dirty secret fund state and Advanced Learners about our scientific edge” in his national education commentary on the dramatic decline in the policies to find and Leading news writers and commentators enrollment of foreign students in American undergraduate and graduate programs develop the United have begun to uncover what advocates of gifted and talented education have long “Americans don’t do science anymore,” States’ gifted and known: that America’s scientific edge has Zakaria wrote. According to a National advanced learners. been produced in significant part by Science Board (NSB) report published this foreigners and immigrants. For at least the year, the United States ranks 17th among past decade, doctoral degrees awarded in nations surveyed in the proportion of engineering, the hard sciences, and college students who major in science and mathematics have been earned by foreign engineering, whereas it ranked 3rd in students in large numbers, often exceeding 1975.1 the number earned by American-born students. These students enter our most In a recent talk on Intelligence elite universities, academically prepared Reorganization, covered by C-SPAN, and personally disciplined to accomplish Professor Fred Hitz from the University of studies in the most intellectually demanding Virginia called for serious “area studies” 43151 Dalcoma Road, Suite 6 fields. I remember my colleague in the programs and more offerings of difficult Clinton Township Michigan 48038 Gifted and Talented Education Office at the languages for American students at the 586-416-1150 www.ispu.us California Department of Education, Dr. university level. Dr. Hitz was a CIA Paul Plowman, wryly noting in the mid- Inspector-General from1990-1998. INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF Professor Hitzs’ orientati on is national States is losing an important source of security andit is throug h that lense that that innovation, as it suffers from its Dr. Linda Forsyth Weidenhamer is an he views the undereducation of long-time policy of benign neglect of its Adjunct Scholar at the Institute for Social American students as a serious national own brainpower. Policy ad Understanding. problem. Since it will be America’s advanced learners who take these What is happening here? First, we are Dr. Weidenhamer he lped develop the 1979 courses at the university level, I argue experiencing a plunge in the number of Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) law that the problem is the underpreparation superbly prepared foreign students and in later years wrote proposed of these students in our public schools, entering our top universities in the most amendments that would strengthen that kindergarten through grade 12. difficult, but necessary, fields of study, law, working with the Department of where notably smaller and smaller Education and the California Association On November 23, 2004, Lou Dobbs, percentages of Americans are willing for the Gifted. From 1984 until mid-1990, who has been covering the outsourcing and able to enter. Second, we are she served as the Administrative of American jobs on his nightly news experiencing a shift of research and Consultant for the Gifted and Talented show, Lou Dobbs Tonight (CNN), heard development talent in the sciences, Education (GATE) Unit, which was a report from CNN reporter Lisa technology, and engineering fields to responsible for the GATE funds and Sylvester, stating that American places outside the United States. Third, programs. She co-authored and co- students “are lagging behind the rest of we are reaping the consequences of our managed implementation of a William and the world in the maths and sciences,” shortsighted national education policies. Flora Hewlett Foundation grant to train and that the latest wav e of outsourcing What can the United States do to teachers to infuse critical thinking (informal is in the intellectual domain. Large mitigate the damage to security and logic) into the core curriculum, and later corporations, she reported, are able to general welfare, as we face the nasty managed a Department of Education hire lawyers in India for one quarter the consequences of a mismatch between research project on the same subject. cost of those in the United States.2 The our nation’s acute needs and our While teaching in the Folsom-Cordova orientation here is economic, as the willingness to put serious money and Unified School District, she served as problem is the ever-risi ng cost of higher clear policy behind our top students? It president of the teacher's union, education in the United States, even as is time to treat this matter as an urgent chairperson of the District's Policy Advisory access to Pell Grants and other federal one. Committee, and member of the negotiation higher-education investme nt diminishes. team that piloted the "interest-based" Thus, salaries for highly educated negotiation method. She served as SOME BACKGROUND Americans who have large student president and vice-president of the loans and lost earning time must be high Sacramento Area Gifted Association and This would not be the first time our enough to make it wo rth the effort and as a director on the State Board of nation has felt a sense of urgency about financial investment to secure the California Association for the Gifted (CAG). the need to invest in advanced and necessary training. Yet, corporations of In 1991, at the Department of Education, gifted students. The 1983 publication, A global reach are financi ally rewarded by she organized and administered the Nation at Risk: The Imperative for outsourcing even well-paid, intellectually federally funded Service-Learning Educational Reform, by the National demanding jobs. This adds to the programs, which began under President Commission on Excellence in complexity of provid ing a sufficient, George H. Bush. In 1994, she was Education, is as salient today as it was highly educated talent pool of investors, appointed to be the first Director of the then, in stating that “Our nation is at researchers, and entrepreneurs for the California Commission on Improving Life risk….Our once unchallenged United States to remai n competitive and Through Service by Gov. Pete Wilson, preeminence in commerce, industry, secure in tomorrow’s world. where she established and managed the science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors federally funded AmeriCorps program throughout the state. Dr. Weidenhamer We are told that our economy will throughout the world.” The Commission earned her Ph.D. in Political Science and recover because of Am erican innovation defined excellence and set a goal for Education from the University of California, - because of our lead in research and our schools that should guide us today: Berkeley. development of new ideas and new products that bring new jobs. This We define “excellence” to policy brief argues that the United mean several related things. 2 INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF At the level of the individual part philosophical and part political. The learner, it means performing on fear of elitism and the reality of political the boundary of individual pressure to attend to closing the gap ability in ways that test and quote of various constituencies within push back personal limits, in the student population caused school and in the workplace. legislators and State education administrators to focus attention and Our goal must be to develop dollars on the ba sis of ethnicity, race, the talents of all to their fullest. language, and socio-economic status, rather than co mmitting to the Attaining that goal requires that development of every child to his or her fullest academic potential. Because we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of attention follows funding, and because their capabilities. 3 so many school districts in California experienced imme nse and rapid growth Leading news writers In 1957, following the Soviet Union’s in the numbers of non-English speaking successful launching of Sputnik, the and special-needs students, the districts and commentators United States realized the need for simply could no t sustain the many excellent programs for gifted and have begun to urgent action to develop a large cadre of future scientists. Both the nation and advanced learners that had begun in the uncover what several states responded to the nation’s 1960s and had ex panded through the early 1980s. call to produce more scientists with advocates of gifted federal Eisenhower and National and talented Science Foundation grants to develop THE ISSUES: Egalitarianism, science programs and several state Politics, and Dependence on Foreign education have long programs for mentally gifted minors. For Students instance, in 1962, a 1,000-pupil known: that research project formed the basis for The issue of unde rvaluing the education Americas’ scientific establishing the Mentally Gifted Minor of advanced learners is tied to the (MGM) program in California, with national “value” of egalitarianism, with a edge has been concomitant disdain for “elitism,” both of sufficient state funding to at least stir a majority of the more than 1,000 school these realities have fed into the produced in districts to compete for MGM funds. In emergence of inter est-group politics as significant part by 1979, after revision and expansion, the forces in the educ ation policies of the MGM program became the Gifted and United States.