By Cadmus Kyrala
I am not sure if you will publish this letter or not, but I am entering in a desperate plea for the children of our city.
We moved here just three years ago. We’ve sent our kids to Sunset Hills and Canyon Ridge schools. But I am disturbed and saddened by the apathy and lack of attention to the children’s needs since we have started sending our children to Dysart schools.
The Dysart website makes bold claims about their gifted education program. Based largely on these claims we moved to Surprise. You can imagine our shock and dismay when we learned that the gifted coordinator had been recently let go and there was no plan of action to ensure continuity of services for gifted children.
That being said, every teacher we engaged with over the next several years assured us that they would engage in “differentiated education” with each of our children. Over the last three years, we have seen no evidence of this differentiation.
We gave the teachers the benefit of the doubt. I, myself, was a teacher of young children for close to 10 years. I was also a gifted child who grew up in Arizona. My parents were active in the PTA and worked avidly to establish gifted learning in the Mesa school district.
I have worked through education, most of my adult life. I hold three advanced degrees and hold a professional doctoral degree. I am certified to teach Montessori preschool. I am and have been a lifelong education advocate. That’s why it pains me to say that Dysart is selling our children short.
There are well-established tests of giftedness. The schools in Dysart ignore them. My children passed these tests, but are unacknowledged here. One of my children got 100% on the AASA Math test, yet the school decided this was not sufficient to offer any kind of accelerated learning.
That child has since been transferred to Freedom Traditional, which is a marginal improvement. But let me be clear. All of these schools share the same problem. They think that giftedness means these kids can jump the curriculum. This is completely false. Giftedness means they can learn faster and learn better when more creative strategies are employed. But there is no mechanism in the Dysart school district to handle the children who are the best and the brightest.
My son complains endlessly about the unmotivated kids around him who treat school as a joke. He mourns his friends who are exceptionally intelligent, yet have learned that school is just for an average sum, so they see no need to bother.
What has done this to our exceptional youth, if not the dispassionate cynicism of a corrupt and apathetic education system? Do we need special services for those children who need additional support because they are challenged in some way? Yes, absolutely. Do we need additional support for the potential leaders of the next generation? The answer from Dysart seems to be that they can take care of themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What do we want to teach our best and brightest students? Do we seriously want to teach them that “you are not welcome here?” Do we seriously want to teach them that “you have no place in our social order?” The negative results of this must be absolutely clear to anyone who grew up through things like the incessant school shootings and brilliant crackpots like Ted Kaczinsky, the Unibomber. Disenfranchising the intelligent children only creates social outcasts that have a grave potential to tip off the scales into tragedy. Why not harness this immense energy and thirst for knowledge rather than destroy it?
I fear that Dysart is creating a society of obedience and dulling intelligence. I have a great fear of this society that is being created in front of us. Most parents do not understand cognitive psychology and education enough to understand the risks and subtle abuses that are being implemented in the school system today. I hope that my public challenge of these institutions may spark some spirit of reform.
Let me leave you with this final notification. On April 18, Canyon Ridge decided to tell the parents that the children had been at school exposed to potentially toxic chemicals that they could not identify, but were working earnestly to identify.
The source of the foul smells has been unidentified for weeks. I ask, pray tell, what will ever motivate them to find the true source if they are reluctant to employ a chemist? And when did they think it was worthwhile to notify parents that their children were exposed to noxious fumes while testing?
Clearly, it was after state testing was done and they can be assured of their funding.
No, we have lost all faith in Dysart. They clearly care more for their dollars than our children. My question for you is, what will you do about it?
