  This NYT article is especially troubling considering HISD has molded their gifted "Vanguard" program into the college track program. Students are funneled through feeder patterns to schools that are more likely to offer AP classes and college preparatory counseling. For the weakening middle class, Houston's Vanguard program is the only way to send your child to public school and still hope for an upper tier college acceptance.
urlLink Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind : "Struggling with shrinking revenues and new federal mandates that focus on improving the test scores of the lowest-achieving pupils, Mountain Grove and many other school districts across the country have turned to cutting programs for their most promising students. 'Rural districts like us, we've been literally bleeding to death,' said Gary Tyrrell, assistant superintendent of the Mountain Grove School District, which has 1,550 students. The formula for cutting back in hard times was straightforward, if painful, Mr. Tyrrell said: Satisfy federal and state requirements first. Then, 'Do as much as we can for the majority and work on down. ' Under that kind of a formula, programs for gifted and talented children have become especially vulnerable.
Unlike services for disabled children, programs for gifted children have no single federal agency to track them. A survey by the National Association for Gifted Children found that 22 states did not contribute toward the costs of programs for gifted children, and five other states spent less than $250,000. Since that survey, released in 2002, the outlook for programs for the gifted has grown harsher. In Michigan, state aid for gifted students fell from more than $4 million a year to $250,000.
Illinois, which was spending $19 million a year on programs for fast learners, eliminated state financing for them. New York was spending $14 million a year on education for the gifted but has now cut all money earmarked for gifted children, saying districts should pay for them out of block grants. Nearly one in four school districts in Connecticut have eliminated their programs for gifted students..." 
