I had a similar opinion of the gifted program I was in. But you seem to drawing the conclusion that money therefore shouldn't be spent on gifted students. I think on the contrary that with bright students it's worth the money to splurge on high functioning teachers.

I think part of the problem is that we phrase it as "gifted". While I was also in a "gifted" program that was completely worthless, my High School also offered classes that were designed for students who wanted to be high achievers. You didn't have to test into them, you just had to want to work hard.

This program was great. I loved it and learned a lot. However, it was controversial because it came at the expense of what was called "mini-school", a program for low achieving (but not handicapped) students, which basically allowed them to do very little academic work and still graduate.

Trading one of these programs for another was a bad choice though. While I clearly didn't suffer negative consequences, every student that took a normal (not mini-school, not high achieving) class did, as they suddenly had a bunch of kids who didn't do well in a normal school environment disrupting their learning.

The lesson I took away from this is that regardless of "giftedness" students will generally self select into the level of classes that is appropriate for them. All that the school needs to do is provide these classes. While this is a hard question, I think it is a more appropriate question than "what do you do with gifted kids"?

I was in Odyssey of the Mind as a child for a number of years, and absolutely loved it. To be fair, it was not run by the school in my district which is apparently pretty abnormal (most are school-based). As such, we had a lot of motivated and enthusiastic parents working as coaches and mentors, instead of burnt out teachers who were only doing it for the stipend.

Its a great program though. We competed in the "structures" division, where you build balsa wood structures and see how much weight they can hold. You also have to perform skits (think mini theatre performances) and do "spontaneouses", impromptu activities designed to make you think creatively or work as a team.

Totally awesome program, definitely on my short list of things I'll get my kids involved in.

My personal experiences are as follows:

1. I was also in a couple of gifted programs in school that didn't do much. They were fun at the time, but I don't really think they helped me develop much personally.

2. I participated in some out of school gifted programs that helped me tremendously. I also just learned things on my own time for fun.

3. I went to 2 different middle schools and 3 different high schools (one of them being the school recieving the lowest amount of funding among all the schools in the state). Most of them were really tight on money and were cutting a lot of programs, both academic and otherwise.

While I do wish that school sponsered gifted programs could get more funding as I know gifted programs can be great, if money is tight, I'd rather money go to other programs. There are many ways a gifted child can learn on their own if they choose to, if some one has an undiagnosed learning disability they can't just change that on a whim.

Really I wish schools just got more funding in general. It varies greatly from school to school (I reccently saw my partners old high shcool and I was amazed at how nice the they had proper gym equipment and clean facilities, I don't know about their actual programs, but it looked like they'd have the money to spend on gifted programs), but at the schools I went to there simply wasn't enough money to go around.

i think there is an argument to be made that your gifted program sucked because it had basically no resources, probably as a result of budgeting decisions.

There is also a very good argument to make that gifted students don't need any special programs, because they are able to learn on their own at a pace that no instructor or regular course could keep up with.

Oh god, I did Odyssey of the Mind for a couple years in elementary school. At the time it was somewhat fun, but in retrospect it was pretty ridiculous.

I think I did "Crunch" (building a balsa wood structure to hold weight) and "Scientific Safari" (some really lame skit thing)...

http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/materials/1995problems.php#p...

http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/materials/1996problems.php#p...

My experience with the gifted program was similar, but I'm not sure it's fair to judge it based on what it accomplishes with it's current paltry funding.

Gifted programs really vary.

When I was in elementary school, I went to Spokane District 81's Tessera program. That program challenged me, and encouraged creative and self-directed study. I absolutely credit it with a big piece of how I think today.

When I was in middle school, I took the school's gifted class as an elective. We made gingerbread houses, told stories, carved pumpkins, and did word search puzzles. It was a profound waste of time.

I have always had a hard time making friends because I think differently than most people. Tessera was the sole exception to that, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

Serendipitously: http://xkcd.com/987