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Gifted Education
Aired Monday, June 14, 2004 on KPLU
By Jennifer Wing
Anchor Lead:
Educators who work with gifted students often say they have special needs, just like students with disabilities.
Teaching gifted children also raises questions about how and whether they should be included in regular classrooms.
In the latest edition of The Learning Curve, KPLU's Jennifer Wing compares two approaches to gifted education.
(This story was written and produced by Walter Stern.)
Listen Now! Windows media- Real Player
Or read the full text below:
Informative weblinks:
National Association for Gifted Children
Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development
Full Story Text:
Ten-year-old Alyssa has a knack for numbers. The pig-tailed Seattle resident enjoys math games
and has always excelled in the subject. In first grade, she computed answers in her head while her classmates
counted on paper. By the end of summer, she was impressing adults with her ability to generate three-digit
sums on the spot. In second grade she says her classes were boring.
"I didn't enjoy them all that much because I wasn't really learning much new. Mostly whatever was taught I had
learned some months or some years before."
Alyssa is now a fourth grader at Lowell Elementary, Seattle's public school for the gifted.
"Here I'm just learning every day and have a much better time."
Students at Lowell work two grade levels above normal in reading and math. Teachers use regular curriculum
for the other subjects, but enhance lessons with in-depth projects. To understand the Alaska gold rush,
students created supply lists and budgets for an imaginary expedition. They then strapped weighty packs on
their backs and traveled an obstacle course.
On a recent day, students experienced what life would be like without certain senses and skills. In one
activity, they tried tying shoes while wearing rubber gloves.
"I can do this, okay, I can do this, I have it, I have it in my grasp, Noooo, oh, so close, so close..."
Lowell serves nearly 400 children in Seattle's Accelerated Progress Program, or APP. These students score
within the top two percent on cognitive ability and achievement tests. The school also has a few dozen special
education students. Molly Peterson is Alyssa's fourth grade teacher. She says the school's two groups
have more in common than most people think.
"You would look at the kids in our special education program, and you would say, of course they need special
opportunities. They need teachers who are trained to deal with their different abilities. They need
accommodations. They need different forms of education. And I think you need to think of these kids,
and look at these kids, in the APP program in the same way."
Experts say gifted students who are not challenged are more likely to act out in class or even drop out of
school. Tracy L. Cross is a professor of gifted studies at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
He and his research partner have interviewed thousands of highly capable students to learn about the
experience of being gifted.
"If you had to say what is by far the most common experience of being gifted in American schools,
it's waiting. Well, ask yourself as an adult person, how well do you do when you're expected to wait?"
Unlike special education, neither the federal nor the state government requires extra services for the gifted.
Even "No Child Left Behind," which targets many specific groups, hardly mentions highly capable students.
Cross says these children are best served when they spend time together. But not all districts have
the resources or popular support for a school like Lowell.
Across the Cascades in Eastern Washington, the Wenatchee School District didn't even consider creating a
self-contained school for the gifted. Community members did not want a program that served only a small
percentage of students. Instead, Wenatchee spreads services across all the district's buildings. "Gifted"
elementary students are pulled out of their regular class between one and three times a week to focus on
their talents. District Enrichment Coordinator Terri Bawden says this approach comes with trade-offs.
"It's a part-time program, and the students are gifted full time. So, what we try to build into what
we offer is complex assignments that require students to work throughout the week on the activities
that they're doing in our Newsroom, which is what we call our group of identified students."
The term "Newsroom" was chosen because it captures the busy energy of young minds working independently
towards common goals. The group is primarily for students who score high on standardized language arts tests.
The district also allows high achieving math students to eliminate work they've already proven they can do
and sends enrichment specialists into regular classrooms to teach occasional lessons.
At the Newsroom in Wenatchee's Sunnyslope Elementary, nine fourth graders file into the school's library.
Each carries a poster with biographical information about a master painter. The students are training to be
art docents. Today they are practicing the presentations they'll make to their regular classes.
Nine-year-old Lucas Otruba gives his presentation on Canadian painter Emily Carr. He chose this artist
partly for her work's strong environmental content. In the painting "Scorned as Timber," a tall, mostly
leafless tree dominates the canvas.
"I don't think she liked how they cut down trees and then it was just a barren wasteland. But how it
showed it in the painting was it was sort of like a distress call in ‘Scorned as Timber.'"
When looking at aptitude and achievement test scores, this Wenatchee program casts a wider net than Lowell.
Lucas's language art scores were not high enough to qualify for Newsroom. But teachers let him in because
he is strong in other areas. He now has a new interest in reading and is often waiting on others in his
regular class.
"But in Newsroom, it's like you're in a different grade, not exactly fifth, but sort of in-between
fourth and fifth. And you feel like this is a really fun place to be."
Many of Lucas's gifted classmates say they would choose their program over a school like Lowell.
They say they like having friends with different abilities, and that they often learn about new hobbies or
subjects from those who aren't considered gifted. Lucas's enrichment teacher Kari DeMarco says the
lessons from Sunnyslope go beyond academics.
"They're seeing a pretty good reflection of the real world because they're working with all kinds
of kids and they're also getting to work with their peers. And that's sort of like my life.
I work with all kinds of people, I grocery shop with all kinds of people, I go to the bank
with all kinds of people, but I also have some time where I'm just with my peers."
But Professor Tracey L. Cross says preparing gifted students for the "real world" should not be a
school's top priority.
"Because if you think about children and how they tend to interact with others, there are a
myriad locations in which kids interact, and school tends to be the big one,
but certainly not the only one."
Programs like the one in Wenatchee can do a lot for gifted students. But research shows the more
time highly capable children spend in a group, the better their needs will be met. Cross says the magic
comes from the synergy of getting gifted minds together.
"Study the mathematicians of Princeton at certain times in history, study the literature of the
great novelists of America when they used to get together and explore ideas as a group. There are certain
kinds of learning that cannot be replicated when you have one or two gifted kids in a classroom."
Regardless of which approach is used to teach these students, the future of gifted education is
uncertain. "No Child Left Behind" is shifting the focus of many districts towards struggling students,
and resources are starting to follow. Citing pressures from the law, several states have made deep
cuts to their programs. Illinois eliminated all of its funding. Michigan and California drastically
reduced theirs. While Washington's funding has remained steady at about six million dollars a year,
pressure from the law could mean services for gifted students will suffer.
The consequences could be dramatic. Cross and other experts predict more students might act
out in class or become underachievers, and the nation will likely produce fewer scientists and
mathematicians who can compete in a global society.
Narrated by Jennifer Wing, KPLU News.
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