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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>I’d like to bake the Ohio Department of Education some chocolate chip cookies. Everyone loves cookies. I want the cookies I make to be the best cookies that any one has ever baked. How will I know that these are the best cookies ever? I guess I’ll let ODE set some sort of test and then I’ll wait until the cookies are finished to see if they pass the test.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Let’s see, what should I put in my cookies? I don’t really need a recipe, because I’m only interested in people thinking that these are the best cookies after they’re finished. So, I guess I’ll use a cup of salt instead of sugar, because I have a lot of it handy, its fairly inexpensive and there is already some of in the cookies. Flour costs way too much money, and I have some dirt in the backyard that I can use instead. And someone gave me some money for eggs, but I spent that on a new coffee machine, so I’ll just use the mayonnaise that I have in the refrigerator – it’s made of eggs, so it should work just fine. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>What?!? The salty, muddy, mayonnaise cookies aren’t the best cookies you’ve ever tasted? You think maybe I should use a cookbook next time? Perhaps I should have used that egg money to buy actual eggs. Perhaps I should have used sugar instead of salt, even if it is more expensive because it will make the cookies taste better. And I’ll skip the dirt, and use some flour. I might have to go to the store to figure out what flour I need, but it will make the cookies taste much better. And to top it off, I’ll search for the best chocolate chips that I can find, because I want these to be the best cookies ever.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Moral of this story: the correct input really does determine the best output. You can’t get a good output without making sure that you have a recipe with all the exact ingredients as input. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This is much like gifted education. We know that the general output should be the maximum growth of our gifted children; but we need to make sure that we have a recipe with the correct ingredients to make this happen. And the better the ingredients, the better the output!<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:10.0pt;line-height:115%'>Robin Retzler<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>