Contact your Representative or Senator to Support Gifted Education in Massachusetts
Use this letter template to get started
Dear Representative/Senator [insert name here],
I am writing to you about an issue I care deeply about, the education of our state's highest potential students.
Massachusetts ranks near the bottom of all 50 states in providing opportunities for learning growth of its advanced learners. Only 2.6% of schools in the state offer gifted programs (the national average is 57%). Massachusetts has one of the largest excellence gaps - the disparity in advanced levels of academic performance across student subgroups - in the nation.
In 2019, DESE delivered to the Massachusetts legislature a study report, Gifted Education in Massachusetts: A Practice and Policy Review.
The report laid out that the Commonwealth is failing to serve the state’s advanced learners, resulting in a lack of access to effective learning growth, especially for low-income, black, and brown advanced students. It identified that Massachusetts is an outlier in the country in its hands-off approach to identifying and serving its highest potential students.
The report included a set of recommendations for how to address these weaknesses in our public education system yet none of them have been implemented, and students and families are still waiting.
[add your own personal connection to this issue]
I ask you to be a champion for these children, in order to support equitable access to learning growth so that ALL students can reach their potential, in our public schools. Please let me know if you have any questions about this important issue, I'd be happy to meet with you.
Thank you,
[your name]
[your mailing address]
