Opinion argument for or against - Essay Example

provide quality education to as many citizens as possible disregarding their individual peculiarities and enable them to realize their potential. If the gifted students have more potential, they should be able to realise it, and creating special classes seems to be the best way out. Still, there are some problems to be considered. The problem of striking a proper balance between standardization and individualization when deciding if the children should study separately or remain in the "ordinary" class is one of the most topical: [s]tandardizing the assessment procedures, content, and scoring criteria enables those not directly involved in the administration of the assessment to understand the conditions under which the performance occurred and the criteria against which it was scored.

Thus, standardization is critical if test scores are to be understood by anyone not intimately knowledgeable about the details of the assessment procedures used to test each student. (Hager & Slocum 2005, 55) However, as the students are all quite diverse, with their own needs and peculiarities, individual approach should also not be neglected. The No Child Left Behind Act states that testing is obligatory for all the American students, including the students with disabilities. (Hager & Slocum 2005, 54) Of course, the problems of choosing an appropriate alternate assessment and the alignment of the "specialized" programs with a general curriculum arise, along with the issue of the ethical character - how reasonable it is to implement high-stakes testing to the students who are less able compared to the rest.

As I have mentioned at the beginning of the paper, though I support the idea of giving the talented and motivated kids as much as possible, there are some very important and burning issues that can make this decision unfair and wrong. For me, the reasons for not placing the gifted students into the specialized classes lay in different spheres. First of all, some students who can be evaluated as non-gifted and who have problems learning, could be the victims of a subjective evaluation - their intellect and abilities might be as high as those of the students with higher scores, but there is something that prevents them from showing that (emotional problems, low self-esteem, difficult situations in the family and other personal issues, etc.) There are, however, some problems that are of a more complicated nature.

Though steps are being taken to achieve equality between the Americans of different genders, races, and social and economic backgrounds, still the problem of inequality is very burning one. It has been proved by researchers that the students coming from the families of higher social and economic background receive better education in schools, and therefore they tend to have significant advantage as compared to poorer children. Black children, among whom the number of those coming from poor families is much higher than among the white kids, have a limited access to education, and therefore even a