Gifted and Talented discussions at 1/27/14 and 2/24/14 SOMSD BOE meetings

jfburch said:

susan1014 said:

jfburch,

You seem to be saying that dealing with G&T is hard, requires resources and the outcome likely to be imperfect, so we shouldn't do anything for now, but instead wait for some "larger institutional change".

No, I said we have to keep banging away at the problem…..

OK, sorry if I misunderstood you...when I hear the the metrics are "gnarly", there should be "no quick fixes" and that solutions are dependent on "larger institutional change", I guess I read that as "maybe some other decade".

Our District didn't accept that for other problems, and many of us were understanding when Osborne put off discussion of G&T for a few years to prioritize those issues...but now it is time to apply the same thoughtfulness and willingness to make things happen to the issue of K-8 G&T education.

And, it's been said before, but dollar to dollar tuition/per pupil spending comparisons are invalid.

Parochial schools are famously subsidized, and even so, they have been closing steadily over the last couple of generations--and much of that is financial as resources go down and the supply of low paid religious staff shrinks. Even high end private schools with tuitions approaching 40K tell their alums that tuition does not cover the cost of education in their annual appeals.

And few private or parochial schools cover the kind of special ed costs that public districts must.

susan,

The devil's in the details, but some of those other initiatives arguably increase the ability to both differentiate instruction and increase the level of rigor/challenge/engagement for all.

That doesn't mean we are done discussing or attending to G & T, but again, I think the drive for a "program" for selected students is wrongheaded.

jfburch said:

susan,

The devil's in the details, but some of those other initiatives arguably increase the ability to both differentiate instruction and increase the level of rigor/challenge/engagement for all.

That doesn't mean we are done discussing or attending to G & T, but again, I think the drive for a "program" for selected students is wrongheaded.

So it is wrongheaded to comply with state law and current educational standards and practices?

Wnb,

The residents will do what business have always been doing. They will go where production=educational costs are lower.

I do agree that mandate must be met. I do not agree that residents must live with them as the new normal.

People shop around same way they shop for shoes. Get the shoes they want at the lowest possible price. Education is not different.

There is a thread by PandP asking about moving to a new town where taxes are lower. They probably love SOMA and MSH but.. why should they stay?

wnb said:

So it is wrongheaded to comply with state law and current educational standards and practices?

Neither of those is especially clear. Hence the ongoing debates…..

The Achieve Foundation is gearing up to raise funds to work with the District in expanding STEM education in K-12. A much more formal announcement of the goals will be made soon. But some things that are clearly on Achieve's radar include:
* introduction of both programming and robotics in the k-8 curriculum. This may take some time to accomplish but we have done a lot of spadework to get the programs moving, perhaps initially as part of Beyond the Bell and then into the curriculum. Achieve would assist in terms of equipment and teacher training;
* with the already new course in robotics at the high school seen as highly successful, pressure is building to expand into more programming, without using Basic at all. A new club has been formed with Achieve's help -- a programming club -- which already has a lot of members. These teachers will be involved in promoting this to be a course at the high school if at all possible and as fast as possible. These teachers come from the math and physics departments;
* support for converting the photography course into digital photography;
* support for digitizing the school archives -- which would mean having students learn archiving, organizing the massive files, creating web sites, and making the archives available to the public and to scholars;
This is only the beginnings. Achieve raised huge sums for the Auditorium and we intend to raise a lot more if at all possible, including corporate grants. We intend to promote programs that incorporate STEM into all aspects of the curriculum, K-8. We have some reason to believe that the district would be very receptive to supporting this effort, with that, of course, remaining to be defined.
Is it a solution? No, not really. But it is a start and it may very well help in shifting priorities over time.

Will Achieve contribute (?%) or fund (100%)

The important thing is that we now have some people in the district with fresh ideas and we need to support them. It's been dead for far too long here.

jfburch said:

wnb said:

So it is wrongheaded to comply with state law and current educational standards and practices?

Neither of those is especially clear. Hence the ongoing debates…..

To be fair, the benefits of the IB MYP program are not especially clear either. Yet, we rushed into it without much second thought, created 2 new positions to administer it etc. I think you are right to say that there is not much agreement on the best way to handle G&T kids in the mainstream, but that should not be an excuse for dragging feet on addressing the needs of such kids. And then to ask everyone to hold off on comment on this topic for over a year and come up with this sorry presentation, that really tells you about the deep reluctance within this district to address this issue.

Duplicate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vINiQ-eXJYY

Another clip from a teacherat movie. Stand and Deliver that is based on Jaime Escalante, a math teacher in Garfield High in Garfield, .CA.

He took a bunch of neglected kids who were basically keeping the seats warm. They were Chicano from the barrios. He taught them. He prepared them for the AP calculus test. They all passed. That went on for a number of years.

In this clip, Jaime Escalate goes to talk to the father of a student after he learned that het father was taking her out of school.

The father relented.

As I have written before, education begins at home. This girl is gifted but her family holds her back.

The school did nothing for her or Kids like her. They would have den lost if Jaime Escalante had not joined the faculty.

I always liked this girl. She always reminded me of a girl in my English class. Same demeanor. Same voice. She lived between my house and the school so many times we walked together. I never got to read the paper she had written for a class assignment that her girl friends were raving about. She was in the accelerated classes but not going to college. She explained her situation to me. Her older brother attended a first tier college and her family could not afford to send her too. There was no way she could go. I never brought up college again.

She too was small, frail and dark haired.

jfburch said:

wnb said:

So it is wrongheaded to comply with state law and current educational standards and practices?

Neither of those is especially clear. Hence the ongoing debates…..

And yet, all of our surrounding districts do more for G&T kids than ours, including racially diverse districts like West Orange. Other districts do while we "debate"? From the presentation at the last Board meeting, it doesn't sound like much, if any, effort was made to learn from what other districts are doing.

Achieve starts programs that eventually become part of the curriculum -- at least that is the intent here. As an ongoing matter, it will not continue to fund 100% of anything. At the start, say for K-8 robotics and programming, it might fund most of the Beyond the Bell effort. As it moves into the curriculum it might fund in whole or in part at the start of such ventures the training of the staff and some equipment. Eventually, it is the district's deal to take care of. District budget is in the over 100 (edited for typo) million range; Achieve is raising over a few years only 1% of a single year's budget -- but it is enough to get things started, like it did in robotics which is rapidly becoming mainstream.

Our district has been behind the curve on many elements as it relates to Gifted and Talented education, including things that do not cost a cent. We have not partnered with organizations that promote Gifted and Talented and enrichment opportunities. We have not institutionally promoted programs that exist for advanced students such as New Jersey Scholars Program, Telluride, etc - which are no cost programs for students and do not cost the district a cent. Other districts that are less pained about these things routinely nominate students for these programs year in and year out while we do nothing to actively promote programs like these. Now, through efforts of teachers like Jude and Achieve we seem to be doing more and more vis a vis STEM but as a district as a whole we are behind in many areas. So now we step up the game with STEM but what about other areas? Without adequate G & T identification of students K-8, many students who should be funneled into all the existing opportunities out there will not be and it will be only the students of the most affluent and actively involved parents that will seek out these opportunities for their children.

If only there were a way for me to add to my earlier nods to gaijin and susan1014 by conveying appreciation for jfburch's and jude's comments, and support for dg64's points about IB, without again exposing my obsession compared with other posters.

I'm not up on the particulars, but both Livingston and West Orange have had recent issues with and changes to their G&T programming. So even where pull out programs are established, it's not a set or simple thing.

jfburch said:

wnb said:

So it is wrongheaded to comply with state law and current educational standards and practices?

Neither of those is especially clear. Hence the ongoing debates…..

I think it all depends on your definition of "especially clear," or something.

http://www.state.nj.us/education/aps/cccs/g_and_t_req.htm

Then there's this puzzling, ambiguous statement I found in the faq: "Meeting the needs of gifted students is not an extra-curricular activity or club but a requirement for all New Jersey public schools."

I can certainly see where there's a great deal open to interpretation here.

Wrongheaded indeed.

I finally watched Monday's BOE meeting and there was a presentation of a revised G&T strategy towards the end of the meeting. No Powerpoint presentation this time. The discussion was based on a printed document that was apparently available at the meeting. Anyone know where I could find that document - maybe on the district website? If anyone had the patience to sit through the end of the meeting or picked up the document, would it be possible for you to briefly recap what was proposed in the document?

It was pretty hard to follow the discussion without the printed document but many thoughtful comments were made by the Board members. Also a parent spoke during public speak about doing an OPRA request for the number of gifted kids served by the district and the reply she got was that no kids received gifted services in LA and for math it was the number of kids who were in math enrichment in 4th and 5th grade, which is being phased out next year.

ETA: The G&T strategy will be voted on in the March meeting.

dg64 said:

I finally watched Monday's BOE meeting and there was a presentation of a revised G&T strategy towards the end of the meeting. No Powerpoint presentation this time. The discussion was based on a printed document that was apparently available at the meeting. Anyone know where I could find that document - maybe on the district website? If anyone had the patience to sit through the end of the meeting or picked up the document, would it be possible for you to briefly recap what was proposed in the document?

It was pretty hard to follow the discussion without the printed document but many thoughtful comments were made by the Board members. Also a parent spoke during public speak about doing an OPRA request for the number of gifted kids served by the district and the reply she got was that no kids received gifted services in LA and for math it was the number of kids who were in math enrichment in 4th and 5th grade, which is being phased out next year.

ETA: The G&T strategy will be voted on in the March meeting.

Here is the link to the printed document

http://nj.somsd.schoolboard.net/sites/nj.somsd.schoolboard.net/files/B.%20GT%20Project%20Plan%20BOE%20PD22414.pdf

It proposes reassigning one FTE to be a Gifted and Talented Coordinator, with some budget for testing and assessment, a little money for extracurricular math/science leagues, etc.

It proposes an implementation timeline that pretty much leaves many/most of our kids out in the cold

Model 1: Proposes beginning screening with this year's kindergarteners, and then adding each incoming K class to the screening process over the next few years. When this year's kindergarteners are in second grade, proposes adding math and science league activities for them.

In addition, the plan suggests the creation of a forensics team in the 2016-17 school year (but it seems to be an elementary team, rather than the surprisingly non-existent High School speech and debate team, and district wide gallery shows/performances starting in 2015-16.

For my family this would mean that my first graders will be a year too old for any program being considered, and we will spend the rest of their elementary careers watching the kids a year behind them get all of the new programs for which they might have been eligible (I don't plan to discuss their specific test scores here, but at least one of my twins would likely qualify).

Model 2: Similar start, but with identification for kids currently in grades 4 and 5, and moving year of identification down to 3rd grade in 2016-17. New math/science/forensics/etc. brought in for those upper elementary school years.

Model 3: Starts screening with kids currently in K and 4, with continuing intake at those ages, and new programs brought in for those kids.

Personally, I think model 1 is unacceptable, as it does very little for any child currently past Kindergarten. Selfishly I'd rather see model 2 than model 3, as my little guys might (if eligible) get two years exposure to elementary activities rather than one, and I think our district does owe something to current students.

But, what I'd really like to see is an implementation that involves more than one FTE, and tests/addresses more grades more quickly, so that we can do more for our current elementary G&T students. This is one of the least-resourced program implementations that I've seen in SOMSD.

I haven't listened to the BOE meeting yet, so don't know what was said, but have given as much of my Saturday morning to this as I'm going to.

Here is the document on revised G & T Strategy:

http://nj.somsd.schoolboard.net/sites/nj.somsd.schoolboard.net/files/B.%20GT%20Project%20Plan%20BOE%20PD22414.pdf

As was pointed out by Mr. Bennett in the meeting the board is being asked to vote on one plan with 3 different roll-out scenarios. There is no choice between differing approaches in this revision.

I watched the meeting and overall good questions asked by Ms. Pai, Mr. Bennett and Ms. Lawson-Muhammed. I appreciated the drill down on differentiation by Ms. Pai and Ms. Lawson-Muhammed. In each instance Dr. Furnari's response indicated a need for consistant monitoring to ensure differentiation is occurring appropriately.

Besides differentiation it seems as though most of the added resources and content will be extra-curricular in nature. There is no mention of cluster grouping in any of the documents and in answer to Dr. Gaudelli's specific question - activities with the exception of those through the Essex County Steering Committee for Gifted and Talented Education will be open to interested students who may not have been among those identified.

What I find a positive element is the identification process includes a norm-referenced scale specifically made for G&T identification and there will be individual learning plans set up for all identified students.

I find it very interesting that a program heavily utilizing differentiation which we have been told all along has been ongoing for years and for which teachers have supposedly been getting training on and also using outside programs like Continental Math and Odyssey of the Mind could really take 3 years to implement fully K-5. I can think of many other programs which were pushed through with much more speed. Overall they are looking to implement this program on a shoestring - many of the programs are low cost/no cost and there seems to be no increase in staff at all in the plan. Instead they refer to redeployment of existing staff. I am most skeptical about the appropriate level of monitoring happening given our Supervisors and Administrators already have increased demands of observation being placed on them due to changes in evaluation systems.

So, we are promising an identification process, writing of education plans, consistent monitoring of use of existing differentiation tools (marked with an (E) in the plan), and some new extracurriculars offered in certain grades.

Essentially we are creating an administrative position to over see testing, write plans for using existing programs to help students identified as Gifted, as well as adding a few more interesting extracurriculars for our student body.

Um, wow? Essentially we are creating an IEP process for G&T students, using existing curriculum and differentiation skills, and phasing it in slowly, since we only plan to allocate one FTE systemwide.

susan1014 said:

Um, wow? Essentially we are creating an IEP process for G&T students, using existing curriculum and differentiation skills, and phasing it in slowly, since we only plan to allocate one FTE systemwide.

That is essentially it.

This shoestring plan that could have been going on for the past 5 years really has very little resources attached to it. I honestly don't understand how this took 2 years to plan and why this (very little plan) could not have been in place for the last 5-10 years. No one has explained why we weren't members of the Essex County Steering Committee on Gifted and Talented all these years for instance.

Thanks for the overview, @susan1014 and @mod. I have yet to read through the plan. Maybe later this afternoon. Jeff Bennett asked a question in the meeting about what would happen if it turns out that the teacher who has a G&T kid in his/her classroom is not well versed in the area that the child is to receive instruction in and the form answer was, "we have monitor the situation". I don't understand why they have such an issue with cluster grouping as this would potentially reduce the kinks in actually implementing a G&T program like the one they are proposing.

Just glanced through that document quickly. I did not see a definition of "gifted and talented" in it. I have to go back and look at the other presentation to see who they are trying to identify - 3% or a larger group maybe 10%. Nor do I see a definition of leadership. IMO it's important to clarify these definitions so that the identification process is straight forward.

Also, at the meeting some BOE members, Madhu Pai and someone else, made a point about whether given the limited resources allocated to this program it should be limited to academic subjects. Don't quite remember the answer to that but I wonder if we are going to see another iteration of this plan before the vote.

Besides Jeff Bennett and Madhu Pai, I think Lawson Muhammad made some very good points. Kudos to her for taking a stand on this unpopular issue.

For those who are interested in this topic, there was a discussion of the G&T Strategy at the last BOE meeting. Good points were made by several BOE members. The vote was postponed to the April meeting as there was a question about the anticipated number of kids for the program. Initially, Ms. Daugherty talked about the 3-5% number which amounted to about 3 kids per grade at each elementary school. But Mr. Eastman wanted to know whether the 3-5% number was the total number of kids for the program or the number for each of the identification areas i.e. 3-5% gifted in math, 3-5% gifted in writing etc.

http://somatv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=9ea96e4df89e287e9fa86e4315971ca0 The G&T discussion is somewhere around 1:30 into the video.

The G&T presentation is here:
http://nj.somsd.schoolboard.net/sites/nj.somsd.schoolboard.net/files/B.%20GT%20Model%20Presentation%20for%20March%20Board%20Mtng%2031314%20rev.pdf

The other reason the board postponed the vote was to push back at the elementary school principals, who overwhelmingly recommended the quickest implementation schedule proposed by the administration, which would start in 1st and 5th grades simultaneously and have all elementary years up and running within a year or two.

ETA: correction to the implementation schedule recommended by the elementary school principals.

True @tbd. There seemed to be many unanswered questions and it was my feeling, based on a statement by Ms. Daugherty that the postponement was also because Ms. Lawson Muhammad was not there. In the past, a member's absence has not stopped the board from voting on a policy, so I wonder whether this was a move to collect votes against the proposal.

as long as there's otherwise a quorum, why should it matter if one person is missing.

The proposal lists the current strategies (ST Math, LA & Math acceleration, etc.) that we have in place, yet it seems like the proposal indicates that G&T will be handled on more on an individualized basis, not unlike a SPED IEP.

Will they be keeping the current strategies - (ST Math, LA & Math acceleration)?
Will they be screening my son for giftedness in dance? How will they deal with giftedness in dance, considering we don't have any dance program? Will we be sending kids out-of-district?