Wo Po asks, Why are American schools slowing down so many bright children?

Public schools were designed to stamp out individual thinking, that was Dewey's intent.  Sadly, public schools are successful at this, they are not successful at teaching reading and math for the most part.  Public schools teach students what to think not how to think, they teach students to obey authority.

The following piece appears in full in the Washington Post.

Why are American schools slowing down so many bright children? 

By Jay Mathews Columnist June 21 at 12:40 PM

Vicki Schulkin, a Northern Virginia parent, knew her son Matt was bright but did not think this was a problem until some of his teachers began to bristle at the erratic working habits that sometimes accompany intellectual gifts.

“In fourth grade, his English teacher told me early in the semester that he didn’t belong in her high-level class because he wasn’t completing all of his homework,” Schulkin said. That teacher changed her mind after he showed great creativity in a poetry assignment, but other instructors were less understanding.

In fifth grade, while Matt was doing SAT math problems in his head, his math teacher refused to acknowledge that he might be gifted because he wasn’tfinishing assignments that he found boring and repetitive.
At the Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development at the University of Iowa’s College of Education, this is old news. In 2004, it published an extensive report, “A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students,” with research showing that children like Matt were poorly served.

Now the center has done a follow-up, “A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America’s Brightest Students.” Its 345 pages have encouraging stories about gifted children like Matt being allowed to accelerate their learning. But authors Susan G. Assouline, Nicholas Colangelo and Joyce VanTassel-Baska remain frustrated with school administrators and legislators impeding students who would do better in more challenging classes.
“Only nine states have policies explicitly permitting acceleration of gifted students,” they write, noting that only one state, Louisiana, prohibits it. “Sixteen states prohibit early entry to kindergarten.” Colangelo told me that the District and Maryland, Virginia and several other states let local districts set acceleration policies.

The authors list 20 forms of acceleration, including early kindergarten admission, grade skipping, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate and early graduation from high school or college. The research shows that many biases against acceleration, such as the fear that children will feel awkward with older classmates, are unfounded. But resistance tograde skipping still rules many schools.
Teacher training programs have not done much to alter that. “It takes more to change teacher ideas about acceleration than a weekend or week-long professional development seminar,” the authors say.
Parents who want their children accelerated have to go to great lengths to make their case. In doing so, they are called “pushy” by educators who dismiss their arguments as nonsense fed by mother love.

That was the reaction Schulkin got at her son’s elementary school. “I wasn’t even asking to have him accelerated,” she said. “I had to fight and advocate for him all the way through. It always broke my heart that there had to be kids . . . who didn’t have parents able to constantly stick up for them.”