Recently, the Texas legislature passed a law that allows districts to give 2 weeks off to any student who passes the state's mandated accountability tests. Even worse, HB 524, currently before the legislature, would allow school districts to only require 4 days of school per week for “certain high-performing students." I mention this here because Texas often acts as a barometer for the educational mood of the rest of the country, and I think this particular mood is not a positive one for gifted education.

According to this kind of legislation, if your children can pass the state's skills test, we don't even pretend that public school holds any educational value for them. They can just go home. Getting rid of the gifted kids gives "teachers more one-on-one with the students who are not passing," Suzanne Marchman, a Texas Education Agency spokeswoman, explained in the Dallas Morning News. Clearly, we here in Texas are just focused on making sure everyone passes the tests, and we don't have time to bother with students who already can.

This kind of legislation is the direct result of the half-cocked "No Child Left Behind" initiative. The problem with No Child Left Behind is that it's wrong-headed. Anita Sharpe, in her blog, asks if the initiative wouldn't be better named "No Child Should Get Too Far Ahead," and I think she's right. Here's the basic idea behind "No Child Left behind" in the form of a sports metaphor. Your child's baseball coach announces that, from now on, every practice will be designed to ensure that every child on the team can pass a mandated minimum baseball-skills test. Those children able to exhibit mastery of the basic skills can go home because there is simply no time to coach anything beyond the basics. If you feel your child has baseball skills beyond the required minimum, perhaps you should enroll him or her in a special summer program because "we here in this baseball program are not interested in teaching all those new-fangled skills needed to actually win a baseball game."

I'm just tired of this. Those of us in gifted education have been running from this fight for too long. We watch as gifted programs get dismantled. We stand by as gifted children are placed back into regular education classrooms where they are forced to drill and practice for state achievement tests that they can already pass. We watch as thousands of parents pull their gifted kids out of public schools and place them in private schools and homeschools. We stand back as state universities eliminate teacher-training programs in gifted education. And I, for one, am tired of it.

I think it's about time that we as parents and teachers of gifted children get outraged at what's going on; time that we start raising hell with administrators who want to eliminate gifted programs in our schools; and time we start supporting those teachers out there who are going the extra mile for children of advanced ability.

And that's not enough. We've got to take an active role with legislators who don't support advanced academics. Through letters, phone calls, or votes, let those politicians who vote for legislation like that just passed in Texas know that we've had enough.

You've heard it before from shortsighted administrators, "Parents of gifted children are pushy." Well, let's start living up to our reputation and push with all we've got.

I can't speak for other publishing companies (but if I could, I would say "We are evil, and you should only buy from Prufrock Press!"), so the tips below are specific to how I like to work with authors.

When considering which companies to approach with your project, pick publishing companies that focus on the kind of material and topics you wish to develop. Most publishers have a niche in which they specialize. It does no good to submit even the best book idea on a topic to a publisher that doesn't publish books on that topic. I can't tell you how many proposals I get for topics such as "psychic phenomena explained," "nature poetry," and "phonics for young readers." Prufrock publishes exclusively for teachers and parents of gifted children and high-ability learners. We really can't consider proposals that are off-topic.

Once you've identified a handful of publishers that might be interested in your work, visit their Web site and see if they have online author support and guidance. If they don't, you can send them an SASE with a request for their author submission guidelines. At Prufrock, we have an area of our Web site devoted to helping authors get started. Of most benefit to a new author in this area are two downloadable documents. The first, "Topics and Areas for Acquisition," outlines the topics we're interested in having authors write about. The document gives you a general idea of the kinds of products we see ourselves publishing in the near future. The second is our "Book Prospectus Preparation Guidelines. These guidelines tell exactly what information should be included in a prospectus sent to us. It is so helpful for our editors when we receive a prospectus that conforms to these guidelines.

Prepare your prospectus with the marketplace in mind. Try to find the intersection of the topic you want to write about and what educators are buying. Here is a suggestion: Review the online catalog of the publisher to which you plan to submit your prospectus. Check out the publisher's bestsellers -- that's a good indication of what the education market is looking for.

Once you have a marketable education product in mind and a publisher's prospectus guidelines in hand, you can develop your proposal. Now, write your proposal and send it in. So many teachers talk to me about writing an activity book over the summer, but they never get around to sending in a prospectus. Take the leap, prepare you prospectus, and sent it in.

I wish you the best in getting published. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them.

Okay, here is a cool thinking skills puzzle you can do with your gifted students. The thinking skills puzzle below comes from this book (you can't order the book yet; we're still editing it and laying it out -- I'll let you know when it's available for preorders). Anyway, try this with your kids this week -- it's a good "hook" (what the author calls his thinking challenges) to get a classroom thinking.

Hook: You have two identical beakers, each holding an identical amount of fluid. One beaker holds red fluid, the other blue fluid. You take 1 tablespoon of the red fluid, drop it into the blue fluid and mix it up thoroughly. You then take 1 tablespoon of this mixture, drop it back into the red fluid and mix it up thoroughly. Question: Do you now have more red fluid in the predominantly blue beaker, more blue fluid in the predominantly red beaker, or are there equal amounts in each?

Solution: Equal amounts. Although the quantity in each beaker is irrelevant, let us assume, that, to begin with, each beaker has 9 tablespoons of fluid. In step one we transfer 1 tablespoon of red fluid to the blue beaker. We now have 10 tablespoons of fluid in that beaker, one-tenth of which is red and nine-tenths of which is blue. We now transfer 1 tablespoon of that mixture back into the red beaker. That tablespoon is one-tenth red and nine-tenths blue, so we have actually transferred one-tenth of a tablespoon of red fluid back intothe red container, making the net amount of red fluid left in the blue container nine-tenths of a tablespoon. When we transferred the mixture into the red container, that tablespoon was one-tenth red and nine-tenths blue, so the net amount of blue we transferred into the red container was also ninetenths of a tablespoon. Not as easy as it seemed at first, eh?

Visit Prufrock Press' online catalog to see our entire selection of thinking skills activity books.