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

Actually, kids can and should be grouped according to ability, especially in math.

We left SOMSD for new job opportunities, but we were pleasantly surprised by how our new district handles math. In each grade level, all kids are given a pretest at the start of a new unit. The teachers then split the groups into a review group (needs extra assistance) a grade level group, and a challenge group (kids who ace the pretest). If there are four grade level teachers, then there are four groups, usually one review group, two grade level groups and one challenge group. The teachers take turns teaching each level. The best part is, the kids are tested at the start of EVERY unit, meaning that if your kid has mastered long division, but struggles with fractions, they have their needs adequately addressed for how they do with that particular skill. The kids who can't tell time, but have aced their addition facts can be with a challenge group for addition and a review group for telling time.

Personally, my own kid has changed groups several times and so do many of the kids. The really don't pay any attention at all to who is in which group, since they are mixed with all the kids in their grade level and they move around so frequently. It's any easy fix and it doesn't cost a thing!

ETA: I know from personal experience that the teachers will sometimes boost a student up if they are working really hard. So, a kid who is repeatedly in the review group but puts in a lot of effort might be challenged by getting bumped up to grade level if he/she tests right on the borderline for review and grade level (same thing goes for grade level and challenge).

adifferentone, lucky you (and your kid) - that is totally the right way to handle math. It is equitable and allows flexibility so kids can move up and down depending on their abilities and the effort they put in. You are right it costs nothing extra. If an elementary school has 6 math teachers, it should be a no-brainer to divide by ability, unless the school is philosophically opposed. I believe the Morristown district does this, though the sections are not as fluid. May I ask what district you are in?

adifferentone said:

Actually, kids can and should be grouped according to ability, especially in math.

We left SOMSD for new job opportunities, but we were pleasantly surprised by how our new district handles math. In each grade level, all kids are given a pretest at the start of a new unit. The teachers then split the groups into a review group (needs extra assistance) a grade level group, and a challenge group (kids who ace the pretest). If there are four grade level teachers, then there are four groups, usually one review group, two grade level groups and one challenge group. The teachers take turns teaching each level. The best part is, the kids are tested at the start of EVERY unit, meaning that if your kid has mastered long division, but struggles with fractions, they have their needs adequately addressed for how they do with that particular skill. The kids who can't tell time, but have aced their addition facts can be with a challenge group for addition and a review group for telling time.

Personally, my own kid has changed groups several times and so do many of the kids. The really don't pay any attention at all to who is in which group, since they are mixed with all the kids in their grade level and they move around so frequently. It's any easy fix and it doesn't cost a thing!

That is how it is done in the much discussed and admired Montgomery County school system. They do the same in reading and begin in first grade. They also have G&T programming. A program like that would be a hard sell in MSO because a significant group of people and BOE members would interpret as "leveling first graders"

With a lot of new technology there is a far greater potential for differentiated instruction. At my son's elementary they have both reading and math "labs" where they work on the computers or iPads at whatever level they are assessed at, so kids are getting challenge no matter where they fall on the grade level scale. It also can help teachers identify problems that might be unaddressed in regular classroom. For example, we learned that my son was having comprehension issues because he was reading too fast.

We also have pull out for kids who need extra help as well as an elementary G&T pull out. G&T Evaluation is done by classroom work and the Inview test. We are much smaller than MSO, so I think its a bit disingenuous to say that " a small district can not adequately serve the needs of every student". If a district feels it is important to have programming that makes exceptions for kids not working at grade level (whether significantly above or below) the district will try to address those needs.

Much of the problem in MSO is that many on the BOE and Osborne feel this is not a priority. And many people are well aware, given the political climate in MSO that implementing a G&T program is going to be a political/racial issue as well as an educational policy one.

jmansky said:

adifferentone, lucky you (and your kid) - that is totally the right way to handle math. It is equitable and allows flexibility so kids can move up and down depending on their abilities and the effort they put in. You are right it costs nothing extra. If an elementary school has 6 math teachers, it should be a no-brainer to divide by ability, unless the school is philosophically opposed. I believe the Morristown district does this, though the sections are not as fluid. May I ask what district you are in?

I second this...every time I hear stories like this, I wonder if I should be uprooting my family before my little guys get any older. I hate the idea, but I wonder every day if the tradeoffs our district makes are the right ones for my kids.

There are other districts that know how to do the sort of grouping and differentiation described, and that make the effort, while we wave our hands, cry differentiation, hope individual teachers will jury-rig solutions for individual kids, and listen to people lecture us that we shouldn't expect any services or support for kids who are far ahead of parts of the curriculum, because "our district can't be everything to everyone".

Personally, I think that if our District can't/won't bring its best efforts to our brightest K-8 students, we should hang our heads in shame. Why should they be the ones who don't merit special efforts?

It actually does work and I know by experience.

My first year in high school- 10th grade - I met a new best friend from a different middle school. It did not take long for him to start telling me a kid he hated/resented. The source was the other kid's mother who shared a hairdresser with his mother and bragged about how smart her son was. My friend's mother was having her hair done at the same time, heard it, was passed off and took it home. She did not reproach my friend. The hostility simply was transmitted to my friend.
He also told me his enemy was in the accelerated class. I had no idea such a class existed. They were all from the same middle school. Never laid my eyes on them before.
well, there was a competition with a prize for one of the subjects. My friend wanted to participate. I went along just for the ride mostly. The teachers were discouraging us openly a few times. Only kids from that advanced class participated. My friend refused to withdraw so I stayed too. No activities within the school for anyone.A third person from my class decided to join us.
We studied the material. Shared notes. Took the test and the top three spots.
My friend was first. Next year I was moved with that group. My friend was not and we both thought it was unfair. My friend eventually went to Yale and after that to Wharton and no, he is not Pennboy2. Not even close.
No extra money was spent. No special teacher was hired. Just grouping of kids by whatever the school criteria were.
That is doable.

Yes, the book that it takes a village to raise a child has been around for a long time and it gets thrown around from time to time. I never read it. I figured it had little in it that would inspire me. The titlr and the catchy phrase would be the best part.
But the major educators and those who must chart a plan for what is best for the child Is the parents and its inner circle. The village through the school can only do so much. Education, like charity, starts at home and school cannot take it on in full. Advocating for a more challenging curriculum can only partially satisfy some of the needs of the child. Family initiated activities can supplement and fill some of the gaps left out by the school.

Going after the school is a one pronged approach. What is needed is a multi pronged approach.

So, mapletree, you seem to be advocating for what we have now, which is adding G&T services only for kids whose parents know how to advocate, work the system via "its inner circle" and push teachers and administrators for more? Kids can have much gifted education as parents can afford to purchase or know how to provide themselves?

It strikes me that such an approach is actually one of the secret ways that the upper class maintains its hold and limits mobility. I personally think that effective G&T education within our schools ought to be a civil rights and social equity issue, and am sad to see that it seems to be seen as the opposite in SOMSD.

Susan,

In the middle of my junior year, someone from the office intercepted me in the hallway to tell me that they had not wanted to immerse me into the accelerated class my sophomore year because they wanted one year of transition for me. I was uncomfortably embarrassed. I did not know why she was telling me that. Nothing was going on to trigger that. Certainly not from my side.

My friends and I taking the top three places had caused a commotion the year before. Three outsiders came out of an average class and outscored the entire accelerated class. That was totally unexpected. Their class had accelerated material that better prepared them for the test. We took some extra material from the library across the school.

I had blended well with my new group. I was friends with many of them. My friend's enemy would occasionally stare at me though. Maybe because he was aware that my closest friend saw him as his enemy ( purely scholastic, they never even exchanged a word ). But his best friend was friendly to me.

I am quite aware that the G&T crowd is sacrificed. And so is the world mostly. They figure no harm is done. Whatever ails them, they can figure out how to resolve them by themselves.

The friend I mentioned in another post who was totally bored in second grade, caused a distraction and was sent to spend time with the janitor? He actually liked to be with the janitor so sometimes he would distract the class until the teacher sent him back to the janitor again.

He was all grown up and an engineer when I met him.

If you have gifted children, you should either move to a better district or accept that you're in for years of frustration.

Here's a NYT editorial on different approaches to gifted education. Some of the comments are worth reading though most of it is the usual criticism of this topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/in-math-and-science-the-best-fend-for-themselves.html

And here's a summary of the responses to that op ed. Quite interesting. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/should-gifted-students-get-more-resources/?ref=sunday

Interesting mapping of gifted resources nationally as well as comparison of math education nationally and internationally and failure rates in AP courses.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/15/sunday-review/outperformed-abroad-tepid-support-at-home.html?ref=sunday

I was struck by this comment.

"
Many commenters blamed the neglect of top students on a long national history of anti-intellectualism. As Charles Morrow of Barton, Vt., wrote, even politicians in this country play down their academic achievement. “In most of the world, teachers are highly trained and held in high esteem,” he wrote. “Education is valued and well provided by the state. Music, known to improve mental acuity, and innovation are fostered. Science is not contested by superstition. Schools are not war zones.”
"

And it seems like it is a difficult task to square delevelling on the one hand and varsity academics for kids who qualify on the other.

I never asked or thought about but..

Was the time.my friend spent with the janitor in some way a factor in choosing engineering as a career later?

I will have to ask him.

And to clarify: there were three middle schools and one high school. My friend and most everyone were from the same middle school and yes the parents were big and thus influential in school offerings so they had all been together even in middle school
I became the only one from my middle school
my other friend was from the third middle school and I can think of three Kidd from her school who were in the accelerated program. Most of my interaction were with kids from the larger group so I tend to neglect those few.

My friend, his enemy and his enemy's best friend all lived on the same street. That nearness also contributed to the animosity since educational achievement was very Important.

I keep thinking all but I think a few were from the school that

gaijin said:

If you have gifted children, you should either move to a better district or accept that you're in for years of frustration.

Not even a C. before None of the Above?

dg64 said:

Here's a NYT editorial on different approaches to gifted education. Some of the comments are worth reading though most of it is the usual criticism of this topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/in-math-and-science-the-best-fend-for-themselves.html

And here's a summary of the responses to that op ed. Quite interesting. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/should-gifted-students-get-more-resources/?ref=sunday

Thanks for the links, @dg64. I think @susan1014 raises an interesting challenge, repeated earlier in this discussion, in response to comments like this one: "I find the concept of ‘gifted and talented’ children to be highly problematic. ... Most often, they are children with parents who had high levels of education. This class advantage is then used to justify additional funds, skewing the educational system even further to reproducing the advantage of those with it.” This was a common theme from many readers, who associate high educational achievement with wealth and privilege.

When jayjayp created a thread for the editorial in December, I asked whether anyone had been caught short by the conclusion: "There is little reliable evidence on the best ways to educate gifted students ..." Apparently nobody was.

There is little reliable evidence on the best ways to prevent cancer. Quick, let's throw up our hands.

DaveSchmidt said:

gaijin said:

If you have gifted children, you should either move to a better district or accept that you're in for years of frustration.

Not even a C. before None of the Above

I think that there really is no C, or D..all of the above, or E... None of the above.


The problem that many parents not just of G&T kids, but also of kids who are just above average, but not in the top 1-5%, face is that there is absolutely nothing in this district that provides them with any sort of challenge. A lot of parents are very frustrated that the district seems to discount or ignore their kids educational needs.

As Mapletree stated anecdotally, some people might prefer that all the children are taught at grade level to avoid any sort of social conflict. Those parents will be perfectly happy in MSO where the educational philosophy is to teach everyone at grade level Parents who think their kids deserve more than just a one size fits all education will choose to pay for enrichment, private schools, or move.

Curious as to the general attitude regarding G&T kids as well as just the above average kids in other districts. I am not aware of any other neighboring districts which lack G&T programming. Most districts seem to be proud of what they can provide for kids, whether they are G&T, Honors, average or needing special services. The feeling I always got when dealing with MSO was that "your kid is above grade level, no need to do anything" end of discussion.

I'm kind of amazed and troubled at the number of people here who seem to think G&T is some kind of exclusive private club, or that what's effective education techniques for G&T students would be good for all students. Neither of these are true, but the implications permeate a lot of these discussions.

And I do think that these perceptions have a lot to do with our administration's reluctance to provide a G&T program.

wnb said:

I'm kind of amazed and troubled at the number of people here who seem to think G&T is some kind of exclusive private club, or that what's effective education techniques for G&T students would be good for all students. Neither of these are true, but the implications permeate a lot of these discussions.

And I do think that these perceptions have a lot to do with our administration's reluctance to provide a G&T program.

Agreed...I want to indulge myself by repeating and building on what I said earlier:

"It strikes me that such an approach [e.g. failure to provide consistent and transparent K-8 G&T identification and programming] is actually one of the secret ways that the upper class maintains its hold and limits mobility. I personally think that effective G&T education within our schools ought to be a civil rights and social equity issue, and am sad to see that it seems to be seen as the opposite in SOMSD."

Upper-middle-class kids will get G&T support, even if it costs parents in time, money and career choice. Private school, enrichment classes, or even one parent scaling back or stopping out of a career to manage educational needs that the school isn't addressing are all options that we see families of higher economic and educational classes embracing.

G&T kids from less-advantaged backgrounds often can't get as much of this, and start falling behind long before they hit the broader offerings of CHS. A G&T program would need to be carefully designed to identify and address the needs of these kids, as well as those of more-advantaged G&T kids, and actually might help our District on some Achievement Gap issues, as well as being the right thing to do as a society.

Once people write that there is nothing in this district that provides certain kids, who may or may not be gifted and talented, with nothing that challenges them -- well then you lose me.

While I can't speak for what happens in the middle and elementary schools, high school is pretty challenging even for the gifted and talented. I teach physics at all four academic levels. I don't recall a single student of mine who wasn't challenged. Yes, we do have a few in each year that can just sit down and look at a text and know it. But they haven't been in my advanced honors or honors classes; maybe they were in someone else's.

We have a very large cohort of students take pre-calc as sophomores which puts them on the track for doing AP calc as juniors and special topics math as seniors. A good number of these kids will take two AP science classes by graduation (AP Chem, AP Physics, AP Bio, AP Environment). We have a lot of kids going through AP Lit, AP English, AP Gov/Pol, AP languages, AP Art History, AP studio art, AP Stats, AP US, AP Euro, AP Psych.

Independent study is available to any student who can sign on with a teacher; I have done this with several.

At least in my advanced honors classes kids read a lot about science and society, science and ethics, and history of science. The advanced honors class produces a video with the cooperation of James Burke of the TV series "Connections". This year we assess all of the technologies that lead to the modern automobile. Last year it was the Mars Curiosity Rover. The year before it was the Apple i-Pad. This year all of my classes have to make short videos in the spirit of James Burke's Knowledge Web (see www.k-web.org and click on Tours and then on "this video" to see what they have to do. These videos will be done in cooperation with the TV studio and placed on a private YouTube Channel. These will require a lot of research into the history of science.

Other teachers do a lot to challenge their students. Do all? No. Do a lot? Yes.

Jude,
By all accounts the challenge offered at the high school level does meet children who are, if not gifted, at least capable of very high level work. I think the discussion and the area many parents feel dissatisfaction with are in the grades leading up to high school. That's where there seems to be a tin ear about these opportunities and needs and the desire for greater stretch and curricular depth. It's as if one is constantly being told, "Just wait, just wait, there's AP at CHS."

jude that sounds great, but does this rigor, creativity and challenge exist anywhere in the previous 9 years our district's kids have to slog through, except in pockets here and there?

i'd also venture to guess that in that almost-decade of schooling you probably lose a decent amount of kids who don't have the willpower to weather the frustration and boredom to get to the promised land of challenging work in high school. or they have never developed the skills to deal with a challenging curriculum so what CHS has to offer isn't available to them - by the time they get to high school they're performing well below ability, their potential squashed/ignored in the previous 9 years. to susan1014's point earlier in the thread, it's probably the kids who have fewer resources at home who suffer the most from this.

(eta: totally agree with mtam!)

thanks holy moly

Jude, my comments are focused on K-8. Sorry if I didnt make that clear. Columbia HS is too late to begin addressing the issue.

There are bright spots at CHS, but some pretty bleak ones as well. The worst of them was in Computer Science, where students were obliged to sit through a course in BASIC before they could study Java, regardless of whether they had prior knowledge of programming. The instructor had no grasp of the subject beyond an educator's rote learning.

I wouldn't call programming a special preserve of the gifted and talented, but at CHS it's difficult to get acknowledgement of any abilities, let alone unusual ones.

susan1014 said:

So, mapletree, you seem to be advocating for what we have now, which is adding G&T services only for kids whose parents know how to advocate, work the system via "its inner circle" and push teachers and administrators for more? Kids can have much gifted education as parents can afford to purchase or know how to provide themselves?

It strikes me that such an approach is actually one of the secret ways that the upper class maintains its hold and limits mobility. I personally think that effective G&T education within our schools ought to be a civil rights and social equity issue, and am sad to see that it seems to be seen as the opposite in SOMSD.

Not in my case. The kids from the middle school that dominated the Accelerated Program in number came from middle class families who worked hard and involved themselves in the school offerings. And they started early. I met entering sophomores while I was there who told me they had been in advanced classes during their middle school years
My friend's father sold insurance. His "enemy's: - I write enemy because it cannot be called rivalry - father had passed away. I do not know of what. I asked but never received a clear response.

This kid went to an Ivy League school and from there to law school. He best friend went to Colby and he is an oncologist. He called me only once. On April 15 to ask about the results of my college applications.

But it does show my point. Education begins in an education friendly home. Relying only on the school to educate a child is what I call a one pronged approach.

True that highly educated families can give the rest a head start and.Their kids have a better chance of being ahead of others and th Hereford being selected for advanced course thus keeping students of equal potential out.
And we have all heard that colleges do like even today to consider legacy students.

One issue with the lack of "consistent and transparent K-8 G&T identification and programming" is that the neither are solved problems--and this affects both these conversations and attempts to address it at the district level.

Identification is was/is gnarly enough from the get go (e.g. the Terman study) with its reliance on IQ and similar or equivalent measures. Those measures are increasingly understood to be problematic, and even to the extent they capture something about the top n%, they suffer from the n+1 problem--where the first person who misses the cutoff is not so very different from the last few (or many) who made it. That person might achieve less, absent opportunities offered others, *or* she might achieve as much as more (depending on other resources and internal drive) so it's not always clear how much the intervention helped or hurt.

Those kind of nationally (or internationally) normed measures are bad enough, but when you use a definition like the NJ one:

"Those students who possess or demonstrate high levels of ability, in one or more content areas, when compared to their chronological peers in the local district and who require modification of their educational program if they are to achieve in accordance with their capabilities."

you get a whole 'nother level of gnarly--*especially* in diverse districts. Now you end up using wholly inappropriate measures of "ability" like NJ ASK (because its required and available) along with or instead of IQ measure and maybe subjective measures. You also have grade levels with at least 12 months of variation in "chronological peers" (which is especially huge in the early grades).

And if you have socioeconomic diversity, you pretty much create or expand achievement gaps by further blessing the blessed with the G&T label. This gets you G&T NYC or Montgomery County style.
(G&T is somewhat less fraught in homogenous high or low performing districts where the "exceptional" kids are fewer and more clearly delineated from the typical ones.)

Finally, there have long been definitions of giftedness that focus on temperament or characteristics (e.g. http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/characgt.htm ) and these are *much* harder to measure and often have nothing to do with being advanced, or fast, or high achieving. Some of those kids do fine in good traditional settings, and some don't. (As do some advanced/high IQ kids for that matter.)

So when one wants to start thinking about gifted programming, it really depends on what is meant by gifted and, as always, the particular needs of any individual child.

There are a million ways to provide additional differentiation/individualization etc., but they all take resources that have been insufficient and effectively *shrinking* in our district for a long time.

Any quick fix program that privileges the top n% by any measure, seems wrongheaded to me.
Lots of other things are possible--but many will cost more than we can manage--others (e.g. Robotics or Model UN can be realistically implemented.

Otherwise, we have to keep banging away at the problem and real solutions will require real creativity and larger institutional change than adding a "program", and, of course *resources*.

Many things can be done without spending a lot of money, as I and others have frequently pointed out. What's missing in MSO is a willingness to do them.

There is also the problem of administrators and teachers not wanting to cooperate with parents, who in many cases are willing and able to help. We accept that students in music and the performing arts receive a mix of public and private instruction. We accept the existence of auditioned ensembles and we applaud teachers that can find works that suit the talents they have on hand.

Why are we unwilling to accept this in math and science? Or any of the other "academic" subjects? This is about ideology and educational pig-headedness, not resources.

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".

The problem that I have with that argument is that we as a District do not accept it for any project that leadership believes in. We quicky moved forward with full-day Kindergarten, with IB, and with a variety of changes to address the achievement gap in spite of the fact that each of them took resources that were hard to find in our tight budget, and in spite of the fact that they might not yield perfect results.

Not trying to improve things was not seen as an option in any of these cases, and I don't accept the selective use of these arguments in the case of G&T students.

Just remember:

A family can demand that a public school provide everything for every student to the tiniest detail but the family will simply not get it all because it is simply unachievable with the current public system.

It's also not all about taxes even if a "village" was able to provide all needs met policy in education. But taxes are extremely important because while its true that families look at the quality of schools when choosing a community where they wish to raise their children, there is also another argument that people do not consider or prefer to not consider. The threshold at which a family simply balks and walks away no matter how deep they have planted their roots in the "village" that it helping raise the children.

Just to make tuition comparisons:
Rutgers U: < 14,000
Seton Hall Prep: roughly 14,000
St. Peter's Prep: roughly 14,000
Our Lady of Sorrows K-8: 4,000

I included St.Peter's Prep because a thread was opened up few days ago and the responses was that it is academically excellent. Most of us are familiar with Catholic schools. Few are familiar with other religiously affiliated schools. Other private schools are in a league of their own.

The average cost of education per student at SOMASD is $18,000 and is scheduled to rise to $22,000 by 2017 assuming the student population remains unchanged. Since the cost of educating high schoolers is higher reportedly, what is the average cost of educating a CHS student per year today? $20,000? $25,000?
Will it cost $30,000 per year to educate a CHS student in 2017. Will young families keep moving to SOMASD towns if their share of the costs gets higher. The total cost of $140,000,000 will be a constant. The cost per family depends on how many own property and if the ratio of family with children in schoolto families with no children In school increases, property taxes can go up. What is the threshold for families considering SOMASD as THE place to raise and educate their young? Child friendly won't do it. Diversity won't do it. Relatively easy commute to NYC won't do it. Not by themselves. Some will say that they love the district but they have to opt for their second or even third choice. They would rather have the biggest value for their buck rather the biggest value. "It's the economy", Clinton told Bush 41.

A number of families will move when their last child has graduated CHS thus joining the hordes of empty nesters by someone's definition .

That's a lot of money in good times. Add the component of an economy that has not 'rebounded, the work environment that does not guarantee even short term security, the ever increasing prices and the feeling that we are In a new normal so forget life as it was when was growing up and understand and adapt to the new normal and ask yourself: what will be the breaking point for me? While my kids are in school? Once the last of my kids graduate high school?

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…..