Lang School

The Lang School
Address
11 Broadway, 3rd Floor New York, New York 10004 United States
Coordinates	40°42′54″N 74°00′22″W / 40.7149°N 74.0061°WCoordinates: 40°42′54″N 74°00′22″W / 40.7149°N 74.0061°W
Information
Head of school	Micaela Olsson Bracamonte
Grades	K-12
Average class size	12
Student to teacher ratio	12:2

The Lang School is a private, nonprofit, K-12 school for gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) students located in New York City's Financial District.^[1] It was the first K-12 school in the U.S. to specialize in educating twice-exceptional (2e) students, though it later came to include (and currently does accept) a wider range of gifted students. The only independent elementary school for twice exceptional students in the country prior to The Lang School was Brideun School in Lafayette, Colorado^[2] (Brideun no longer operates as a school.^[3])

Students

Twice exceptional students are identified as being gifted/talented ("G&T") and diagnosed with specific learning challenges, such as ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, high functioning autism, social communication disorder or sensory processing challenges.^[4] These students are often unable to master curriculum to their potential in a traditional classroom; they are often labelled "lazy" and misunderstood by teachers, administrators, and peers.^[5] Identifying 2e students is difficult, because a gifted child's strengths often mask their needs for supports or remediation, and their attentional or behavioral challenges might obscure their strengths. These children are eligible for special educational services under the IDEA Act, but they often face difficulties accessing those services because their "special needs" can be difficult to recognize. In some states, giftedness itself is regarded as a special need that requires state-funded services and, even, an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).^[6]

History

The Lang School grew out of the founder's frustration to find an appropriate school placement for her two sons.^[7] It opened in September 2010 with two classes totaling 13 students, mostly boys.^[8][9] By its sixth year (2016), the school had five classes containing 50 gifted and twice-exceptional students – still mostly boys.

Name

The Lang School is named after Cyril Lang, the founder's tenth grade English teacher. Mr. Lang was a Rockville, Maryland public school teacher who, in 1979, taught what the local Board of Education deemed overly challenging material to his "ungifted" students, engaging them in Socratic debates about Machiavelli’s The Prince and Plato’s Republic, texts normally limited to 12th-grade Advanced Placement classes. Although the school where he was working threatened to fire him if he did not teach what was commonly considered 10th-grade material in more traditional ways, he persisted. “I made a premeditated, intellectual decision to continue teaching the way I had,” he said at the time. “There’s nothing wrong with the genetic makeup of these students. It’s the educational system that’s declining. We are bearing witness to the triumph of mediocrity.”^[10]

References

1. http://tribecacitizen.com/2010/04/27/nkotb-the-lang-school-and-the-quad-manhattan/
2. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20138770,00.html
3. http://www.brideun.com/e-eureka_home.html
4. http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/newsletter/spring98/sprng984.html twice exceptional
5. http://www.ldonline.org/article/5914
6. http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/2e.index.htm
7. http://www.dnainfo.com/20101019/downtown/new-tribeca-school-serves-gifted-children-with-learning-disabilities
8. http://www.thelangschool.org/AboutUs.aspx
9. Nikki Dowling, No bullying, support for a new kind of school, Downtown Express ("The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan"), Volume 23, Number 6, June 18–24, 2010
10. Time Magazine, Dec.15 1980