Archive for August 12th, 2009

My column, “The Princesss Problem,” ran in this morning’s USA Today. It’s based loosely on some of the discussion we’ve had here on this blog about little girls’ obsessions with princesses, and what it means from a societal level. Researching and writing this column has reminded me of the importance of negotiating and maintaining one’s earning capacity as a woman. You never know when you will need to support your family. It’s an interesting question of why young women don’t see supporting their children financially as a crucial part of mothering. We will see if this changes over time.

I’m making my Education Week debut this week with a column, co-written with education writer (and former USA Today colleague) Richard Whitmire. The column, called “An easy (but seldom used) way to accommodate gifted children” is in the print Education Week edition, plus online (via subscription) at the EW website, and then in it’s entirety at EdNews.org.

The gist? In tough times, gifted education looks like a tempting target for budget cuts. But one of the best ways to accommodate gifted children — grade or subject matter skipping, aka “acceleration” — is incredibly cheap, and often saves taxpayers money. Given that studies have found it to be effective (and not socially problematic) we just don’t know why it isn’t used more often.