Resolution proposed by the MCCPTA Gifted Child Committee

Recommending Development of a Gifted and Talented Curriculum

WHEREAS, a Montgomery County Public Schools ("MCPS") Middle School Reform Steering Committee (the "Steering Committee") has been charged to formulate a comprehensive plan (the "Plan") that will produce a rigorous and challenging middle school education program that improves teaching and learning, promotes continuous improvement in all middle schools, and ensures that all students are prepared for rigorous high school standards; and

WHEREAS, Policy IOA, recognizing that gifted and talented students require instructional and curricular adjustments that can create a better match between their identified needs and the educational services they typically receive, provides that MCPS will prepare a scope and sequence of objectives and activities as well as materials that accelerate and enrich the regular curriculum in Pre-kindergarten-8, in mathematics, reading/language arts, science, and social studies; and

WHEREAS, the National Association for Gifted Children's Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Program Standards (with which the components of the MCPS gifted and talented program are to be aligned) require as a minimum standard that instruction objectives and strategies provided to gifted learners must be systematically differentiated from those in the regular classroom; and

WHEREAS, Policy IFA requires that curricula promote continuity and cumulative acquisition and application of skills and knowledge and allow teachers and students to understand what is expected and required of them; and

WHEREAS, this Committee finds that the middle school MCPS Curriculum Guides provide extensions and enhancements for optional and periodic use in enriching gifted and talented education, but that such extensions and enhancements neither sequentially and systematically ground the acceleration of gifted and talented education, nor allow teachers and students to understand what is expected and required of them; and

WHEREAS, as a part of a multiyear plan for development of strong local gifted and talented programs, MCPS has determined to strengthen differentiation in the instructional guides;

BE IT RESOLVED, that this Committee recommends to the Steering Committee that there be included in the Plan the recommendation that MCPS add as soon as possible to the middle school Curriculum Guides sequenced and systematic higher level gifted and talented curricula, in mathematics, reading/language arts, science, and social studies.