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"Every Student Deserves a Gifted Education"

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What a real pleasant surprise to see this in my mailbox when I got home today. It was a copy of the #1 New Release in Amazon books on Education Administration. In this book, Brian Butler speaks the hard truth about what we are currentlly getting wrong in basic education. Every student deserves a good education. That is what "gifted" really means. And as Brian Butler strongly states in the title of his book, every child deserves a good education. Every child is unique in talents and strengths. Every child is precious and gifted so every child must be matched with good quality instruction. When we begin to categorize children as early as elementary school, all we are doing is labeling them according to their parents' resources. That is not "gifted". That is "privilege". Limiting good education to children born with privilege will only exacerbate inequity in society, completely undermining our objective of providing education for all.  To order at Amazon,

DepEd Has a New Curriculum

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After more than ten years, the Department of Education in the Philippines has now taken steps to revised its ill-advised K plus 12 curriculum. The new curriculum, called MATATAG K to 10 curriculum addresses some of the issues I raised in the first post on this blog.  Above copied from ABS-CBN News As a summary, these are the changes according to    ABS-CBN News : In the present system, there are the seven identified foundational skills or learning areas for students: mother tongue Filipino English Mathematics  Araling Panlipunan MAPEH Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao Under the adjusted K to 10 curriculum, learning areas are reduced to only five: Language Reading and Literacy Mathematics Makabansa GMRC (Good Manners and Right Conduct) There are likewise suggestions that the spiral approach in teaching math and sciences in grades 7 to 10 would be removed. The K plus 12 curriculum was clearly a wasteful experiment in the past ten years. It led to no improvement in basic education. What remains t

What Does AI Say About Lack of Recognition for Scoring High in PSAT?

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I have not posted on this blog for some time. Of course, that does not mean a lack of interest or concern. Schools are still trying to recover from the pandemic and the problem of inequity in education remains pressing. There is something novel, however, that has caught the attention of educators: Artificial Intelligence. There is now ChatGPT, a program that can write a paragraph when provided a prompt, which is quite alarming for classes that require students to write essays. So, I tried it this morning and this is what I got: It is reasonable. In fact, ChatGPT is more reasonable than some parents in Fairfax county. Recently, some high schools in Fairfax county failed to notify their students of reaching a commended status in the PSAT. Just to be clear (from nationalmerit.org):  What does it mean to be National Merit Commended? Commended Students are named based on a nationally applied Selection Index score that may vary from year to year and is typically below the level required for