Research - Summaries of research on topics related to gifted education, including ability grouping, identification, and the social and emotional needs of academically advanced students

In the News - Articles from the popular press on issues related to the educational needs of high ability students.

Legal Issues - Ongoing issues with the state regarding student identification and services for talented and gifted students.

School Information System - A Madison community blog that comments on education both locally and nationally

Curriculum - Discussion of MMSD curriculum issues including math, middle school redesign, small learning communities and AP course offerings

MMSD Budget - Current budget issues as well as links to prior years' budget items, controversies and hot topics

Links - A listing of local, regional, and national resources such as WCATY, WATG, and NAGC

Upcoming Events

• If you moved out of the Madison school district or enrolled your children in a private school, the district would like to hear from you. There is a brief online survey.

• For those interested, you can read the letter we sent in August 2008 to our new Superintendent.

What's New

• A Strategic Plan for the district and a new TAG Plan are currently being articulated and will be approved by the BoE in June.
  • In thinking about these plans, their language, and what they do or don't specify, the following TAG plans from other districts in Dane county might be of interest:
    • Oregon
    • Fort Atkinson
    • McFarland

• At the May meeting of the Dane County, Chrys Mursky, the DPI consultant for Gifted and Talented distributed the following handout.

• We have updated our Math in the Madison schools pages in the aftermath of the release of the report by the district's Math Task Force.

• The December issue of Parenting for High Potential is devoted to the issue of parent advocacy. One article Advocating for Our Future is available online.

• We now have a graphic that shows what has happened to TAG spending in the District over the last five years along with total District spending.

• If you are interested in examining WKCE raw scores and percentile scores, you can check out this document that compares scores from 2004/05 and 2005/06. You should realize that because the major purpose of the test is to discriminate between basic and proficient levels of ability, the test scores are less reliable at either end of the distribution, i.e., the standard errors of measurement are larger (2-3x larger).

Current News

• 17 March 2009 - The National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC) has approved a formal position statement on grouping.

• 1 October 2008 - With help from the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, WCATY will provide test fee waivers for all free and reduced lunch students who are eligible to participate in the Northwestern University Midwest Academic Talent Search (NUMATS).
  
  To register your school for this opportunity. Please contact Carole.Trone@wcaty.org

• 30 June 2008 - It is with great sadness that we report the loss of MMSD TAG resource teacher Ted Widerski.

• 28 February 2008 - We are trying something new with our collection of news articles. We are using del.icio.us to track and organize published news stories from across the web.

• 28 January 2008 - Dr. Daniel Nerad chosen as next MMSD superintendent.

• Growing Up Online - PBS Frontline Series about kids and the internet can be viewed online.