When the board met on September 17 to discuss a proposed revision of the AIM program, Superintendent Winfred Roberson told the board that there was no consensus on either how to define giftedness or how to best measure it in terms of placement on standardized tests like the OLSAT (Otis-Lennon School Ability Test).
As it turns out, Davis is not the only district struggling to reconcile its practices with the research. Yesterday, NPR ran a story that asked many of the same questions that we as a community have been trying to grapple with.
Using a case study, NPR notes, “With a child so bright, some parents might assume that she’d do great in any school setting, and pretty much leave it at that.” But many who have scored high on IQ and other tests as children, have struggled in school.
Ron Turiello told NPR he “almost dropped out of high school. He says he was bored, unmotivated, socially isolated.” Now an attorney, he and his wife helped found a private school in Sunnyvale, Calif., exclusively for the gifted, called Helios.
According to NPR, while estimates vary, there are around 3 million students nationwide “who could be considered academically gifted and talented. The education they get is the subject of a national debate about what our public schools owe to each child in the post-No Child Left Behind era.”
NPR cites three big questions about: How to define them, how to identify them and how best to serve them.
How do you define giftedness? The article cites a number of difficulties in defining giftedness. The article introduces the concept of “asynchronous development,” which means “a student whose mental capacities develop ahead of chronological age.”
The concept uses an IQ test and indexes the score with age, “with 100 as the average; a 6 year old who gives answers characteristic of a 12 year old would have an IQ of 200.” However, these tests “become less useful as children get older because there is less ‘headroom’ on the test, especially for those who are already high scorers.”
So more recent research de-emphasizes IQ alone and focuses on other factors. However, “as the definitions get broader, the measurements get more subjective and thus, perhaps, less useful. Some centers for gifted children put out checklists of ‘giftedness’ so broad that any proud parent would be hard-pressed not to recognize her child.”
One of our big questions is how many students should be designated gifted. This is a critical question which forms the basis for the determination that 98 percent would be the cutoff, even as the Superintendent acknowledged that districts widely vary in the cutoff score and the determination was less educationally and research based and more based on a vague “conservation” of what is appropriate for Davis.
NPR finds widespread disagreement here. Linda Silverman, an educational psychologist and founder of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development believes, for instance, “the population we should be focusing on is the top 2.5 percent to 3 percent of achievers, not the top 5 to 10 percent.” That might give credence to DJUSD’s 98 percent cutoff.
But Scott Peters, education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater disagrees. He says the question that every teacher and every school should be asking is, “How will we serve the students who already know what I’m covering today?” He notes, “In a school where most children are in remediation, he argues, a child who is simply performing on grade level may need special attention.”
If you recall, we have cited Scott Peters before. He describes that the underlying question is “what are we identifying students for?” He added, “The issue of group-specific norms is complex. The biggest issue is that we can use group-specific norms to identify more students – what we’ll get are students with the highest relative potential relative to their peers. However, since we will have then changed the Identification procedure we won’t necessarily be identifying students who can benefit from the programs we provide. We will need to differentiate services and programming to suit a more diverse population.”
Critically, he noted, “I think that an assessment system should err on the side of inclusion and should depend on the type of program being offered.” He added, “Right now we have a severe lack of actual programming in US schools for advanced students. We don’t have adequate programs for a variety of activities.”
The next question is how do you identify gifted students? Again, there is no agreed-upon standard. However, the district has moved away from teacher-based assessments and for good reason, as it seemed to exemplify unconscious bias. Still this a common practice: “The most common answer nationwide is: First, by teacher and/or parent nomination. After that come tests.”
NPR acknowledges the problem of underrepresentation: “Minority and free-reduced lunch students are extremely underrepresented in gifted programs nationwide. The problem starts with that first step. Less-educated or non-English-speaking parents may not be aware of gifted program opportunities. Pre-service teachers, says Peters, typically get one day of training on gifted students, which may not prepare them to recognize giftedness in its many forms.”
NPR writes: “Research shows that screening every child, rather than relying on nominations, produces far more equitable outcomes.”
Tests have their problems as well as “standardized tests produce results that can be skewed by background cultural knowledge, language learner status and racial and social privilege. Even nonverbal tasks like puzzles are influenced by class and cultural background.”
They continue: “Using a single test-score cutoff as the criteria is common but not considered best practice.”
“In addition, the majority of districts in the U.S. test children for these programs before the third grade. Experts worry that identifying children only at the outset of school can be a problem, because abilities change over time, and the practice favors students who have an enriched environment at home. Experts prefer the use of multiple criteria and multiple opportunities. Portfolios or auditions, interviews or narrative profiles may be part of the process.”
Finally, how to best serve gifted students is the biggest controversy in gifted education.
Professor Peters says that “many districts focus their resources on identifying gifted or advanced learners, while offering little or nothing to serve them.”
“There are cases where parents spend years advocating for students, kids get multiple rounds of testing, and at the end of the day they’re provided with a little bit of differentiation or an hour of resource-room time in the course of a week,” he says. “That’s not sufficient for a fourth-grader, say, who needs to take geometry.”
“I believe that every single day in school a gifted child has the right to learn something new — not to help the teacher,” Professor Silverman told NPR. “And to be protected from bullying, teasing and abuse.”
NPR said “Helping gifted students may or may not take many more resources.” But it does require a shift in mindset to the idea that “every child deserves to be challenged,” as Ron Turiello says.
NPR reports that “federal education policy is currently being reconfigured around some version of that idea.”
“The whole NCLB era, and really back to the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s, was about getting kids to grade level, to minimal proficiency,” said Professor Peters. “There seems to be a change in belief now — that you need to show growth in every student.”
NPR concludes, “That means, instead of just focusing on the 50 percent of kids who are below average, teachers should be responsible for the half who are above average, too. “That’s huge. It’s hard to articulate how big of a sea change that is.””
Where does that leave us? About where we were ten days ago, grappling with the same questions as everyone else.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I was also listening to a story of “giftedness” on NPR yesterday. Quite a different story. This was a profile of Dame Gillian Lynn, lifelong dancer from age 7 into her 80’s currently and choreographer of Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Dame Gillian’s story starts when her mother sought the advice of the family doctor because Gillian was unable to sit still and it was felt that she had a learning disorder. Luckily for the young Gillian, the doctor told her that he needed to speak with her mother alone and left her in his office, the door ajar. He turned on the radio to a music station as they were walking out and they stepped behind the door and watched. The 7 year old Gillian immediately jumped up and began dancing and leaping around the room to the music. The doctor then correctly assessed that there was nothing wrong with Gillian that would not be addressed by dance lessons. This correct interpretation of her “bad” behavior led to her life’s calling and a spectacular career.
I have taught in many settings, although never in pre or elementary school. I am no expert, but would like to share my belief that we are perhaps spending too much time and effort on a single group of students and what is best for them, while overlooking the elephant in the room, the very poor job we do of helping each child find their individual strength and skills set which may or may not conform to the STEM areas of knowledge which we are currently pushing while downplaying other endeavors.
Well done Tia. Agree 100%
Critically he noted, “I think that an assessment system should err on the side of inclusion and should depend on the type of program being offered.” He added, “Right now we have a severe lack of actual programming in US schools for advanced students. We don’t have adequate programs for a variety of activities.” This is what the existing identification system did rather well. The district is moving to a system that errs on the side of exclusion from the program.
From this NPR article it appears there is a coming shift in education philosophy from the no child left behind focus on the children that are below average in performance to the concept that every child deserves to be challenged. From the current guidance from the board to the proposal put forth by the administration it looks like they are moving towards bringing up the lower performing students while neglecting all students. They are stuck in the NCLB mindset.
“I believe that every single day in school a gifted child has the right to learn something new — not to help the teacher,” Professor Silverman told NPR. “And to be protected from bullying, teasing and abuse.”
This supports the concerns of the parents with children in the AIM program that want them to be challenged more in the classroom. How many children are bullied for liking to read instead of sports by the “dumb jocks” that have to maintain their status in the school yard pecking order. Unfortunately our society holds up athletic prowess over academic performance in K-8. How many Little League All Star T shirts are worn to school on a daily basis. How many parents also buy the same All Star T shirt with their child’s name on it. And that is just one sport. I do not recall ever seeing an “all star” T shirt for math or science or any academic achievement worn by a student or parent in my many years in Davis. What message does this send to our children. The AIM self-contained classrooms have a valid purpose that supports its target population.
I wonder what kind of outrage there would be from parents if their little darlings were prohibited from wearing their “all star” apparel to school because it demeans other children.
I find this to be an inaccurate description of what is happening in Davis, where academic success is highly valued and GATE qualification is lorded over others on the playground, bragged about by parents, etc. You have not even heard the speeches at DHS graduations where good students talk about feeling like failures because they only have a 3.8 GPA and didn’t get into an elite university. What world do you live in?
I take offense at your depiction of students who have a high interest in athletics as “dumb jocks.” It is telling of how you view students who are not GATE identified.
Ryankelly, I’ve got to call you on that statement. In our community and society, we do not really recognize academic achievement in a positive way. We have sports sections in our newspapers that sing the praises of athletics and single out individuals for their athletic contributions.
The local high school social calendar is entirely focused around the sporting schedules for football and basketball (e.g. Homecoming). Do we give letterman jackets for those who get good grades? We don’t even have any type of honor roll to recognize students’ academic achievement. Each spring, there is a public signing day for high school athletes that announces where they will be playing. Do we publicly acknowledge where are our high achievers are going to college or recognize their hard work and accomplishments?
I have sat through a number of school board meetings in the last decade. Many of them have involved public recognition of individual students or clubs for their athletic achievements or success in their activity, and rightfully so. But it is ironic that I have yet to see a single moment of recognition for individuals’ academic achievements in a board meeting, especially when education is supposed to be why we have public schools in the first place.
You really need to talk to the students and hear what they think. If you’re basing your opinion on what you read in the Enterprise, then you are out of touch with how competitive Davis schools are when it comes to academics. Or why there is a high level of abuse of drugs that help students study, etc.
I don’t know about School Board meetings, but the high-school newspaper, The Hub, did provide the names and colleges the students intended to attend for my children’s senior years http://www.bluedevilhub.com/
In addition, the Enterprise lists the scholarships DHS students have earned. Here is a link to the most recent year’s http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/and-the-award-goes-to-200-dhs-seniors/
If you read the Enterprise, you’ll see that the Rotary Club provides regular awards.
If you read DHS’ course catalog, you’ll realize that that vast majority of courses are “A-G” courses, which are college-prep courses. You’ll also see that sheer number of AP, Honors, and higher level courses requiring years of prerequisites, like French 6, make up 80-90% of the offerings. And if your child is not highly academic– no choices.
To me, “the message” is students who are provided choices are encouraged and valued, while the students being provided no choices are not valued.
So, I have to disagree with you.
Plus lots of coverage of the DHS Robotics team, for example.
DavisAnon and ryankelly
“it is ironic that I have yet to see a single moment of recognition for individuals’ academic achievements in a board meeting, especially when education is supposed to be why we have public schools in the first place.”
I agree with the objection to the description of student athletes as “dumb jocks”. I also think that it is important to listen to what the students think.
So just one brief story about the message my daughter was given. When in high school as essay she wrote made it to the final round in a national writing competition. The only recognition and /or kudos that she received were from the sponsoring teacher and me. Yes, that’s right. Into national finals, with only two people supporting her as compared to a possible full scholarship at an elite academic institution for national ranking in an athletic event.
You could certainly ask her how she felt about that……but she has put it behind her.
Also want to point out, with respect to Enterprise coverage– For sports with volunteer coaches, parents draft the stories submitted to the Enterprise and then the Enterprise fact-checks. That’s how musical and academic achievements, like the Madrigals and Robotics Club, get covered, as well. The Enterprise doesn’t know unless someone tells them.
Students and their families are expected to toot their own horns, whether its academics or athletics. I don’t like it, but that is the DJUSD culture and the DJUSD AIM culture, too.
Here is a sampling of today’s coverage in The Davis Enterprise (10/1/2015):
DHS Boasts 11 national merit scholarship semifinalists
robotics team gets up close Look at Manufacturing in Japan
DHS Students spearhead use of drones in agriculture
award-winner-helps-others-stay-physically-mentally-healthy
I think you guys are not paying attention.
I think the Enterprise does a good job of covering both athletic and academic achievement by students.
ryankelly lies again. Only one of those articles is on October 1st. How about Sept 10, 16, and 24 for the other three. You simply proved my point that you had to go through a months worth of articles to find four articles involving students. I can go to the sports section on any give day and find four articles involving students. You and Archer are both pathetic liars.
[moderator] Could we PLEASE stop calling people liars?
ryankelly,
You show your true colors in the above comment. Instead of focusing on whether the program meets the needs of the students in it you are more focused on destroying it due to some perception that the AIM “qualification is lorded over others on the playground, bragged about by parents, etc.” How do you think the children that do not qualify or do not participate would feel if the AIM students got T shirts “North Davis Elementary 4th Grade AIM Class” with a list of the children’s names on the back. Children could wear it to school. Parents could also buy a T shirt and wear it around town. That is what happens with the Davis Little League All Stars. The younger kids who do not make the D64 teams get distinctive hats if they make one of the 4th of July teams.
zaqzaq and ryankelly
This discussion highlights for me the negative effects on children of their parents identifying the “winners and losers” regardless of what activity is involved or whether the sorting is done overtly by T-shirts or whether it is done more subtly with snide comments about entry into Gate/AIM indicating that they are of superior intelligence. Either approach is stifling to those children who are not identified as “special” for whatever reason.
zaqzaq – your reference to “dumb jocks” is offensive. Clearly intelligence is not hereditary.
Many AIM students do participate in sports and enjoy it; does that make them “dumb jocks”? Many non-AIM students also like to read rather than play sports.
Sports by its nature are spectator events and lend themselves to media coverage. Same is true of performing arts; there is often an arts section of the newspaper. AIM and regular classroom activities are not typically spectator events. I have never been invited to watch my kids take a math test.
There thus is equivalently little coverage of regular classrooms or ELL or special ed.
Have to disagree with you wdf re: sports… but first, I agree that many gifted academic students are drawn to an participate in sports… actually helps their general well-being, and therefore their intellectual well being… in the late 40’s, early 50’s Penn State was a soccer powerhouse… the coach recruited from the engineering college… he wanted athletes who could think!
The point of disagreement is, “Sports by its nature are spectator events”. Tell that to X-country runners, tennis players, wrestlers, track and field athletes, among others. I was a National Merit scholar, and competed in X-country and tennis in HS, because I liked to run and play tennis. Except for Coach, almost never had an “audience” (spectators). My motivations were I got “class time” to do what I wanted to do anyhow, being part of a “team” (yet I chose two sports where you are scored as a team, but pretty much individual effort), and to avoid the “general PE” requirement.
hpierce: The point of disagreement is, “Sports by its nature are spectator events”. Tell that to X-country runners, tennis players, wrestlers, track and field athletes, among others. I was a National Merit scholar, and competed in X-country and tennis in HS, because I liked to run and play tennis.
You define “spectator” in terms of how many people physically show up. Not many outsiders show up for the events you list, therefore you say they are not spectator events. Professionally, those events may attract spectators (Olympics, Wimbledon).
What I had in mind is the fact that those activities lend themselves to being watched in anticipation of the suspense of the outcome. It’s still a narrative that’s easier to report and follow in the news. It is also competitive.
Performing arts events may hypothetically attract almost no one, but still a performance would happen.
Again, I don’t think traditional classwork or exams seem to lend themselves to narratives you would want to read about in the conventional news. But as MrsW points out, parents can write up a press-/news release and probably find it published.
ryankelly states,
“zaqzaq – your reference to “dumb jocks” is offensive. Clearly intelligence is not hereditary.”
Nice strategy of attacking the messenger instead of the message. You change my anonymous name as an attempted subtle dig. You then label my content as “offensive” and then attack my intelligence. What this tells me is that you do not have an intelligent response to the points that I have made and the examples that were used. Instead you have to fall back on insults intended to belittle a person (anonymous at that) that disagrees with you. This is a common strategy used by politicians in both parties. It kind of reminds me of what we have seen from Donald Trump the last couple of months. Understand that I to can also come up with cute takes on your anonymous name or question your intelligence. Instead I prefer to counter your points and question the bias in your opinions.
I think you got the point. I’ll leave it at that.
(Just one thing – The misspelling of you name was actually just a mistake on my part and not intentional, but in your hyped up, attack mode state you may not accept this as plausible. So be it.)
ryan, you and I probably disagree with one another more often than we agree, but given my never ending battles with SIRI about how my spellings get changed when I hit the Send button, it is not hard for me to imagine SIRI changing the six typed letters zaqzaq to the real word zigzag. That is how SIRI rolls.
zaqzaq
“How many children are bullied for liking to read instead of sports by the “dumb jocks” that have to maintain their status in the school yard pecking order.”
I think that you have made a very astute observation. I would extend this to include all of the kinds of stratification that our society places on children which extends into adulthood. We prioritize arbitrarily rewarding some endeavors much more highly than others for no apparent reason.
I will use my own profession as an example. Surgical subspecialties are paid much more highly than are primary care physicians. This is a completely arbitrary assignment of worth based on supposed number of years needed to hone ones skills. However, this completely ignores the fact that all physicians are subject to ongoing formalized learning across the entirety of our careers. We all have to continually learn new material and skills. And yet some are payed hundreds of thousands more than others per year.
We start stratifying the “worth” of children well before they enter school labeling some as “gifted” and others as hyperactive, inattentive or backwards even before they have a reasonable change to explore and find their unique competencies based on an arbitrary assessment of “worth”. This is true whether it is athletics, or STEM or any other highly valued group which is placed above others whose work is equally necessary to the well being of our society.
Let me be frank here.
Differentiation is hard. Standardization makes the job easier.
It is the same in business.
I have 20 employees all with different strengths and development challenges and personalities and career path interests. If I were to map out a visual diagram of this it would like like a ball of yarn… that constantly winds and unwinds and re-orders.
It is much more difficult to have an individual performance and development plan for each employee. It would make my job a lot easier to just set some standards and tell everyone to follow the same rules and plans.
But my business outcomes would suffer a great deal with a standardization approach compared to what they are with differentiated leadership.
When you customize the development path and plan to the individual, you optimize development outcomes.
The GATE/AIM debate is about those parents that figured it out and want it for their kids. But we should not be having just a debate about those kids (however we decide to select them); the debate about those kids should be a subset of the the larger discussion about how to implement comprehensive and fully-inclusive differentiation in the education system. It will be hard, but it is the right thing do to.
That is what we need to be debating… how do we get it done.
Frankly
“how to implement comprehensive and fully-inclusive differentiation in the education system. It will be hard, but it is the right thing do to.”
Completely agree. I believe that where we will start to disagree is on the critical “how do we get it done”.
I believe that our society has taken a wrong turn in the way that we value human activity. American popular culture at some point decided that the amount of money and material wealth that one can accumulate is the measure of one’s worth as an individual. How many children have been devalued or discouraged from following their dreams because those dreams do not include making a lot of money, or in our system, even enough to keep body and soul together. What would be the fate of the young Gilliian had her mother responded to the doctor, “Well that’s fine doc, but she will never be able to make a living dancing, so can’t you just prescribe a medication for ADHD so that she can pursue a STEM career ?
I think that nothing short of a change in the way that we value human activity will allow us to stop branding our children as “highly valuable” ( gifted) which obviously implies that others are less valuable before they are even past third grade. I believe that we have, as a society accumulated enough wealth to ensure that every citizen has enough to live on to allow them to contribute according to their own strengths without having to worry where their next meal will come from. If we were to provide a decent living “floor” for our entire population, imagine how many Gillians might be able to contribute fully, prosper, and yes possibly even rise materially based on their special, if unrecognized skills.
David,
I didn’t see the NPR program, so I’m not privy to the context of Silverman’s comments cited above.
I have heard from any number of teachers, in Davis, who talk about a subpopulation of 2-3% who might be universally agreed are truly “gifted”. Such comments would appear to jive with your reference.
How you equate or link this comment to a 98% cutoff on a quantitative test, however, continues to elude me as those results would still seem to qualify 5-10%, or more, of our test takers.
It is an interesting and important topic, i.e. the distinction between the cohort of “very high achievers” and the “truly gifted”, and how best to serve their individual learning needs.
I commend you for pursuing the conversation.
Doby… there are those who are ‘gifted’, who do quite well ‘in the general population’ at school. There are some that don’t, for a variety of reasons. There is a difference between “needs” and “status”. This has been a problem, IMO, for the current programs.
The key takeaway of the article for me was the point that the way gifted students are identified is far less important than what services they are ultimately provided. Why are we so fixated on identification? If parents think AIM is superior to the regular classroom, why not expand rather than reduce access to it?
In our experience, public school education in Davis (at least in the early years) moves at a gentle, leisurely pace. That is appropriate for some students, but not for others. There is not always a clear line between high-achieving and “true” gifted students. We should be spending less time arguing over who gets identified and more time thinking how we can provide all students with meaningful opportunities to learn at their own rate.
“Why are we so fixated on identification? If parents think AIM is superior to the regular classroom, why not expand rather than reduce access to it?”
questions i keep asking myself
Agree.
What if the reasons “parents think AIM is superior” are myth(s)?
Myths in what way?
What I am hearing from parents with children in the AIM program is that they are happy with the program and want it to remain more or less as is. Maybe there are dissatisfied AIM parents, but if so they haven’t been very vocal. If parents of current AIM kids were complaining, I’d listen.
If parents of kids not AIM-identified were saying that they thought the identification criteria were too narrow and the program sounded like a good fit for their child as well, I’d listen to them too.
But the impetus for change, if I’m understanding it correctly, is coming from parents whose kids are not in AIM and who don’t want their kids to be in AIM. And these people have a stake in this … why? I understand that some people think that too much choice detracts from the neighborhood programs, but no one is going after the other special programs, only AIM.
“…more time thinking how we can provide all students with meaningful opportunities to learn at their own rate.”
AMEN! Note that it is at the individual student’s rate… not just their parents’ conception of what their child should experience.
Completely spot on!
as i understand this issue: there is no consensus let along definitive research on the program. there is nothing wrong with davis aim other than it might be larger than some people like. so we are going to reinvent the boat in order to change things that we don’t know need to be changed. i don’t get it.
I’m with you!
NPR, 9/28/2015: Who Are The ‘Gifted And Talented’ And What Do They Need?
MrsW
“Students and their families are expected to toot their own horns, whether its academics or athletics. I don’t like it, but that is the DJUSD culture and the DJUSD AIM culture, too.”
I think that you have made a very valid point. It would never have occurred to me to write an article about my own daughter’s excellence in writing. I wonder if it would have been published had I done so.
I cannot help but wonder further if this is not a potential source of “gap” in acknowledgement of the accomplishments of our children. I wonder if it is not more likely that a highly articulate, well educated parent may be much more likely to “write up” their child’s achievements than will a parent who was not raised in a family where it is the norm to see your name in the paper, or more likely one in which the parent struggles with reading or the language. Maybe we could find some more creative ways to bridge “the gap” that do not involve major amounts of money or restructuring, but only some parents willingness to highlight the achievements of children other than their own.