This is a great time to start talking to the Democratic and Republican candidates in your district about the need for TAG funding and services in Oregon.
State of Oregon Information:
Selected Oregon State Laws, Rules and Procedures of interest to TAG parents
Margaret's summary of the Oregon TAG rights, rules and complaint procedure:
Legislature:
Information about the activities of the current legislature is available at http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/
See also the Bills and Laws list at Oregon Legislature Online: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws
You can listen to live streaming audio of the Legislature in session--or hear archived sessions http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/citizen_engagement/Pages/ArchivedAudio.aspx
The Oregon Revised Statutes 2013 edition are available at http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/Pages/ORS.aspx
Oregon Administrative Rules, are found on the website for the Secretary of State http://sos.oregon.gov/archives/Pages/oregon_administrative_rules.aspx
From that site you can choose section 581, Oregon Administrative Rules, Department of Education
or go directly to
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/rules/oars_500/oar_581/581_tofc.html
Scroll down for sections 1310, 1320 and 1330 to find the Oregon Administrative Rules for TAG. The rules concerning appeals and complaints are sections 1940 and 1941 at the end.
Oregon Department of Education
The Oregon Department of Education http://www.ode.state.or.us/ has a section for TAG information on its website at http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=76 This includes a list of TAG contacts in every school district in the state, and information about the TAG mandate. Check out the page for "teachers" as well as the one for "parents".
State TAG specialist:
Angela Allen
Oregon Department of Education
255 Capitol Street NE Salem, OR 97310-0203
(503) (503) 947-5931
"Gifted Brochure" an easy to read summary of Oregon TAG rules for parents
http://www.ode.state.or.us/teachlearn/specialty/tag/giftedbrochure.pdf
Oregon Department of Education, TAG Coordinators by District
Oregon State Education Laws, Rules and Procedures for Standards Complaints
Oregon Department of Education Essential Skills matrix: a comparative list of the test scores on a variety of standardized tests (such as the SAT and the ACT) that can be used for demonstrating that a student has met the "essential skills" requirement for graduation:
http://www.ode.state.or.us/wma/teachlearn/testing/admin/2012-13_appendix_k.pdf
School District Findings/Compliance Orders
Portland TAG Appeal (on another webpage)
Salem TAG Appeals :State findings
2008 Salem TAG Report and Findings
State Department of Education Letter finding Salem in compliance, June 12, 2009
Findings from other school districts in Oregon:
Ashland (2017)
Ashland (2018)
My comments on the findings in Columbia, Newberg and Reynolds
The State of Oregon has issued Findings of Fact and Recommendation for Columbia, Newberg, Reynolds, and Sisters.These findings are public record, and are available upon request from the state. What follows are paraphrases of the Department of Education findings and reports. These are close to the original language, but are not exact copies of the original wording. I have omitted some parts.The names of the complainants are also public record, but I have chosen not to send them out online. Following each message, I have added a brief comment of my own--this is MY OWN COMMENT, not a legal opinion. My own interpolations are all within square brackets--everything else is a paraphrase of the document.
Response from the Lake Oswego School District to the recommendations of the TAG PTA
The National Association for Gifted Children advocates for gifted students on a federal level and publishes a State of the States report on gifted education every other year. http://www.nagc.org/
NAGC legislative updates can be found at http://www.nagc.org/legislativeupdate.aspx
"Access by Students with Disabilities to Accelerated Programs:" a letter from the Office of Civil Rights concerning the right of qualified disabled students to participate in accelerated programs without having to sacrifice their Special Education services
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20071226.html
FirstGov is a site from the U.S. Government that provides search retrievals and links to federal, state and local websites. http://firstgov.gov/
Within "FirstGov" is the Students' Information Page, which offers a helpful set of links to all sorts of information of interest to students including travel information, volunteer sites, colleges and universities, "government 101" and scholarships.
CongressLink makes it easy to find out what is going on in Congress, write your congressperson and find out who is serving on committees. Intended as a teaching site, it also features articles and lesson plans. http://www.congresslink.org/
Write your senator: contact information http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented NRCG/T in Storrs, Connecticut. Funded by the US Department of Education, provides TAG-related research studies by nationally respected scholars. Site offers publication list and abstracts-- http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/
For links to individual monographs, see below, "Ability grouping"
"National Excellence: A Case for Developing America's Talent" (1993) a report from the U.S. Department of Education
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED359743
U.S. Department of Education-- main home page for entire dept.-- http://www.ed.gov/index.html
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) the place to look for information such as student enrollment http://nces.ed.gov/
Nation's Report Card: from NCES, results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
State by state data can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/
The "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 includes a separate section for the Javits program for Talented and Gifted Students. http://www.ed.gov/legislation/ESEA02/index.html
ERIC digests on Gifted Education: These were produced by the Education Resource Information Center which was reorganized. The digests have been archived and are searchable by subject.
The ERIC database site itself is back up and running at http://www.eric.ed.gov/
The Hoagies site is mirroring the gifted digests at http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/index.html
For a table of the location of other archived ERIC materials, go to http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/where_now.html
ERIC reauthorization news, including a table of relocated ERIC resources provided by Kate Corby, Education and Psychology Bibliographer, Michigan State University Libraries