Obama strips all Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement education funding. What next?
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First, The Obama Administration totally striped the only funding for gifted and talented education that primarily funded underprivileged but gifted children's education. This was the 37 year old $7.5 million Javits Grant for Gifted and Talented Students.
Next, Obama eliminated the $45.8 million Advanced Placement grant funds to states. This was not to fund the high ability gifted, but the above average student.
Next he scraped the $40 million Arts in Education fund followed by the $42 million Byrd Honors Scholarships. That's a total of $93.3 million stripped from the education programs of all above average students.
With what is the Obama Administration going to replace this $93.3 million "savings". A $4 billion Race to the Top (RttT) program. Yes, that's billion with a B. In other words it would take about 43 years of "savings" to pay for one year of Race to the Top.
Race to the Top is more like Race to the Bottom. When RttT was being formalized, the National Association for Gifted Children(NAGC) requested that high ability children be included in specific parts of the application. They asked for incentives for school districts to match students with ability appropriate curricula. They made the request for an emphasis on closing the achievement gap between the highest performing disadvantaged students and their more advantaged peers.
The NAGC then suggested making high-levelSTEM(science, technology,engineering,mathematics) curriculum available to some learners at earlier grades than the norm. The Obama Administration totally ignored all suggestions and request. RttT only provides