I found this My Turn column interesting about the question of spending/resources for special ed vs. gifted programs.

Corwood, what an awful nightmare to happen so close to your family. I hope the community can get through this and heal.

woke up late the morning I've got to travel double the distance for a lecture, missed my ride, even later for writing down directions, late so now in heavy traffic, on autopilot to work, so then fifteen minutes further away from actual destination, no breakfast, pissed off and self-recriminating for being such a fuck-off that I pass my destination and end up on a fucking highway and finally bailed on the lecture.

Pissy all day, get home, lock keys in car along with apartment keys. Call emergency line, argue with guy that being locked out when it's about to rain is indeed a fucking emergency.

Home. Inside.

Still cranky.

Man, Corwood, that's awful.

Our valedictorian in high schools was controversial (at least with the kids I knew in honors and AP classes) because they didn't use weighted GPA for valedictorian. Hence our valedictorian was never in a honors or AP class and was not regarded as being all that smart. At the time I remember it being a topic of bitter discussion amongst the AP and honors crowd.

We totally had that, too! And I forgot it until now! Hilarious. Although I think one of our graduation speakers was an AP Calculus type kid and one wasn't.

he he ... you kids. When I graduated, I didn't have a chance at being valedictorian for two reasons. #1 it went to the BOY with the highest grade point average and #2 the HS averaged in gym grades.

We didn't have weighted GPA, however there was a thing called the "honor's curve" which basically just raised your grade in the class if you took honors. I regularly got 50's and 60's on math tests, but always came out with anywhere from a 90 - 93. English classes were less curved but still, they just added points.

In 6th, 7th and 8th grade you were also allowed to "challenge" any midterm or final if you had over a 95 in the class. That meant that you could choose to take your grade in the class as your exam grade and not take the final. We spent midterms and finals week in the library, reading "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.

#2 the HS averaged in gym grades.

We took gym pass/fail, thank god.

Oh, and I did finally (!) get the email from my friend about her baby -- with picture! Adorable.

I think gym was graded more on effort than on results in my HS. I know that I have some bad HS PE memories, mostly because the other PE teacher did a lot more games and ours did a lot more running, but all the bad was largely pushed aside by the moment when the outfield started backing up when I came to the plate in softball. For someone who was basically a nerd in HS that is a pretty sweet memory.

I just got an email from a client with the following signature line:

God delights in taking the arena of our greatest fear and putting us in a position to face it. This is how He trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle.

Huh.

Timelies all!

Happy Birthday tommyrot!

I started reading when I was 3. There was talking of skipping me ahead a year when I started school, but it was decided I wasn't ready. I ended up a year ahead in reading through all of elementary school. That ended in 6th grade, so I ended up repeating 6th grade reading.

Did Sparkle(the local gifted program) for a year or so. (It was for a specific age range, and it wasn't around part of the time I was in that range)

Our school generally chose the valedictorian strictly on GPA. There were 4 of us with 4.0s my year, so they held a competition and let each us submit a speech. I didn't submit one, but my best friend did, and she won. The graduation theme was "Dawning of a New Day" so in her speech she compared high school to one long, tedious night. hee hee.