That's rad.

Why were you applying for a grant in the first place?

That is absolutely ridiculous. I previously had a pretty neutral opinion of the DoE, but now...

At least 99% of educators agree with his view and it's basically true. We have more pressing problems in education than challenging the top 1%. However, DOE doesn't spend most of it's money on the most pressing problem - and it's not clear that throwing money at the most important problems will lead to solutions. When allocating resources, the goal should be to fund efforts that will have a relatively large impact per dollar spent. You shouldn't have to argue that you are solving the most important educational problem.

You'll need to convince folks that you've identified an important problem (challenging top students) that is likely to be solved in a way that benefits society (create knowledge-based industries of the future) at a reasonable cost. While it may seem obvious that the problem is important, most educators just don't think along these lines. You really can't go wrong by putting together a fairly detailed argument that includes:

1. recent history of industries started by problem-solvers, especially those with training,

2. educational comparison with countries competing for knowledge work - what others are doing to develop the top students and how their efforts have been successful

3. desirability of schools with strong problem solving programs. How can good problem solving programs can affect the desirability of a school and surrounding community?

Good luck on your future grant efforts. Get back in touch with your DOE contact and discuss your reviews. You'll probably get some insight into how to better communicate your message to the reviewers and whether other agencies (DoD?) are more likely funding sources.

gt - good points. I would say that most of the negatives we received came down to our not knowing how to play the grant game. The positives were largely consistent across the 3 reviewers, but the negatives were haphazard, and indicated more that we hadn't hit the right tone (be it sales tone or right buzzwords or whatever).

As for convincing them that it is an important problem, I take that comment I quoted to mean that this is essentially impossible for us alone to do in a grant application. I think we need a Sputnik-like event to happen in order for the government as an institution to wake up to this issue.

I'm not sure we'll bother applying for one of these types of grants again. I feel like we're largely competing with one hand behind our back - there are many companies whose whole livelihood is landing these grants. The products itself are immaterial - the marketable skill they have is actually getting grants. That's not our game. (Moreover, I have mixed feelings in general about even applying for these grants - I don't even think this is something that the government should be doing. For example, I hate the fact that the government is spending millions, and probably billions, on these sorts of grants to companies or to academics who get the grants as seed money for an eventual company. Isn't that what venture capital is for?)

The detailed argument you mention would be a powerful one, but doing the studies to get the data you mention seems very, very hard.

kinda related:

http://www.kobrascorner.com/new/high-school.php

I have to agree that relatively, this is not a big problem.

Richard, I'm not sure what you wrote in your grant application, but you might want to tie in the NSA / CIA on this app. The CIA / NSA have testified multiple times in front of congress that they no longer have the human resources they need. You can try framing your grant to suggest that you can produce the next generation of super NSA operatives. (And you can probably apply for grants from the NSF and other places as well).

Another parent once said something that rang very true: If "special ed" kids were treated the same way as "gifted" kids (and she was a parent to both), the schools would be sued. Yet things are set up so that schools can pretty much ignore the special needs of students at one end of the spectrum. Very sad and frustrating.

Relative to what? These are the kids who are going to make all the major medical discoveries of the next generation. If you want to be happy and healthy at age 80, you should be worried that this county turns out fewer and fewer top math and science students, particularly when the country's visa laws prevent us from importing many new ones. If you care about national security issues, you should worry about the fact that major defense contractors can't find nearly enough qualified American citizens to replace the ones who are retiring as the baby boomers age.

It's a huge problem, and I'm curious to understand why you think it isn't. These top students are the ones who are going to do do almost all the economic and scientific heavily lifting of the next generation - helping them helps everyone. Technology now allows the efforts of the few to be leveraged to the benefit of the many more than ever before. We have a clear identification of a population that contains most of this 'few'. Why do we ignore them?

Part of the reason that top students are ignored is the reward structure set up for schools by NCLB and the schools themselves. There's a ceiling effect for the kids we're talking about. It's easier to show improvement (by their measures) in a child who is scoring one or more standard deviations below the mean than in one who is scoring above. This isn't the whole excuse (because the problem we are talking about is much more longstanding than NCLB), but it explains why this moment in particular is a challenging one to convince people to pay attention to top students.

Then there are those people who just figure the top kids are going to come out okay no matter what, so the schools' efforts and funds are better directed elsewhere. They've most likely never sat in a typical public school classroom suffering slow brain death and neuronal revolt during glacially paced classes. Many public school classrooms sadly punish anyone who departs from the beaten path. Going either faster or slower than the herd is strongly discouraged, if not outright punished. I'm speaking in generalities, of course, because there are classrooms that are exceptions, but for most of us this is a prevailing pattern. Schools in general are not set up to address individual needs.

First of all, the response made no mention of the top 1% – only high-performing students. These students come from the top 10% or so of the population. However, many of those who are not challenged never become high-performing students. We need to do more to help every child reach their full potential. What on earth are we thinking by excluding the best and brightest from our mission? I have seen too many schools where the bottom 10% disrupt classrooms and drain resources from the other 90%. But somehow undereducating those who cause relatively few problems and use relatively few resources is, relatively speaking, not a problem?