Sandra Watkins is an associate professor in educational leadership at Western Illinois University. The boy she writes about is her grandson who lives in a different state and a girl in his school.
It’s a beautiful September day and the school buses are lined up in front of Ellis Elementary School. First grade classes are going on their very first field trip to the museum.
At 8:30 a.m., you can hear the excitement in the air as the students climb onto the buses anticipating a glimpse of the wonderful exhibits filled with artifacts and sculptures and hearing about the contributions Greece made to our current civilization.
Teachers are excited as well. They spent the summer designing lesson plans and colorful traveling learning centers for the classrooms to ensure students will be engaged and knowledgeable about Greek culture and the influence on our communities today.
The teachers decided to engage the students on the bus by having a trivia contest. The contest began with the first question: Where is the Parthenon located?
Immediately on bus number one, Jack “Wikipedia” (students nicknamed him this in kindergarten) answers: “Athens, Greece, on the Acropolis.”
Elizabeth (the students nicknamed her “Smarty Pants” in kindergarten) on bus two cheerfully responds: “Athens, Greece, in the Plaka area on the top of the Acropolis.”
The parent volunteers have heard about these students, but as the buses continue to roll on to the museum, they are amazed at the knowledge these first-grade students have of Greece.
Over the last year and a half they have heard about Jack and Elizabeth every night at the dinner table or driving to a soccer game. Jack and Elizabeth are two first-graders at Ellis Elementary who just seem to know all the answers to all the questions. Both are popular, tell funny stories — especially when substitute teachers come to teach class — and they are super coordinated on the playground equipment during recess.
High-ability learners
Jack and Elizabeth are examples of “high-ability” learners. These students are everywhere. We call them by different names — high-ability, advanced learners, exceptional, gifted or bright — and they are everywhere in every size and type of school district. All of these young people, according to “A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students Vol. 1,” have an enhanced capacity to learn.
The 2004 Digest of Education Statistics claims there were more than 3 million “gifted” students identified in America, while countless others fall within the “academically talented” range in one or more subjects. But many other high-ability students are never identified by formal measures and, as a result, end up underachieving throughout their entire K-12 school experience.
Currently, time and resources in schools are spent focused on the general education curriculum that serves the majority of students who fall into the middle of the learning curve, and on the remediation of struggling students. Students demonstrating the most ability, who complete assigned work without difficulty, receive the least amount of attention.
This thinking can have detrimental effects on the overall performance of schools and on these high-ability students. Simply put, these students are being left behind.
Jack’s story
Jack’s parents recognized his abilities early on. At age 4, he was reading. His two experienced pre-school teachers recognized his gifts immediately and used his gifts by having him conduct “read-alouds” to the other students every Wednesday and Friday. They also supplemented his instruction with challenging work on a daily basis. Jack loved pre-school, and the students and teachers loved him.
At the end of the school year, the teachers met with Jack’s parents and informed them “kindergarten would be a waste of time for Jack” and wrote a recommendation to the school to consider acceleration to first grade. His parents, however, were reluctant to have him advanced to first grade, especially his athletic father. They also expressed concerns about his socialization “later on” — so Jack went to kindergarten the next year.
Very few adjustments were made in the kindergarten classroom curriculum to accommodate Jack’s advanced learning abilities. At teacher conferences in October, to the surprise of his parents, the teacher was defensive and somewhat hostile when they asked if Jack was getting any challenging, extra work as he had in pre-school.
She acknowledged Jack was well liked by his peers and very social, but she refused to acknowledge that he possessed the characteristics of a high-ability learner who needed a differentiated curriculum to meet his needs.
Frustrated, Jack’s parents took him to a nearby university, where he was evaluated by a team of experts knowledgeable about high-ability children. Jack scored at the 99th percentile on an individual intelligence test. Achievement testing indicated Jack was achieving beyond the fourth grade in reading as well as math. The university experts’ recommendation: acceleration.
Acceleration can be accomplished either by moving a child up a grade level or by offering acceleration in one or more subject areas, i.e. having a first-grader join the third-graders for reading only.
Jack’s parents were still hesitant about grade-level acceleration because of the ramifications for sports and activities later on. So they met with the classroom teacher, the principal and the resource teacher and inquired about the possibility of subject level acceleration for reading and math. The school’s answer: a pull-out resource program conducted several times each quarter with no acceleration. The standard kindergarten curriculum was their solution.
Jack spent the entire year not challenged and bored with school. The school librarian even refused to allow him check out books in the library that were at the fourth-grade reading level where he had tested. The parents continued to intervene, even to the superintendent, but they met with resistance at every step. They remained positive and hopeful that first grade would be different.
Over the summer, neighbors encouraged Jack’s parents to investigate a highly respected private school. After reviewing the university’s evaluation and the public school data and records, the staff at the private school met with the parents and interviewed Jack.
The school staff was very impressed with this delightful child. They were eager to get Jack on their attendance rolls as soon as possible. School personnel immediately initiated an individualized educational plan, based on the data, and recommended subject level acceleration for Jack in reading, and, after four weeks, they promised to evaluate his progress in both reading and math and make additional recommendations.
Jack will leave Ellis Elementary school on Monday of next week to enroll in the private school. The parents have three other children and are concerned about the tuition and fees, but they plan to cut back on everything else so they can offer this child an appropriate education.
High ability learning traits
Joe Renzulli is an expert on high-ability learners. For more than 40 years, he has studied the characteristics of successful people who have made significant contributions to their various fields. He defines three basic human traits evident in high-achieving individuals:
• above average general ability or specific abilities
• high levels of commitment or motivation
• high levels of creativity
The most recent definition of high-ability learners comes from the No Child Left Behind Act: “ … these are the students, children or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic or leadership capability, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.”
However, the Act does not group these students into a category or require districts to report on the academic progress of high-ability learners.
In 2008, Zhaohui B. Sheng and I published a descriptive study involving a cohort of Illinois students who initially scored in the advanced learner/exceeds category on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) assessment in third grade. The purpose of the longitudinal study was to track the achievement trends and find out whether these students would continue to score in the “exceeds” category.
The study followed these students from grade three through eight in both reading and math. ISAT data were also used to explore district characteristics, including size, socioeconomic status and per-pupil expenses.
Data indicated the advanced learners were not making adequate achievement gains as they progressed from one grade to the next, regardless of district characteristics. A progression of underachievement occurred as early as fifth grade in math and between grades five and eight in reading.
The losses for high-achieving students were alarming. The majority of districts demonstrated identical trends: high-achieving students continue to lose ground.
Elizabeth’s story
Elizabeth’s parents are hopeful that she will be challenged this school year. She is popular and has many friends, but is bored in school. She loves recess, art, music and social studies.
She claims the rest of the subjects are boring and “way too easy,” so she is pulled out each quarter to the gifted resource room. But Elizabeth finds most of this work not very challenging and is not especially fond of the resource teacher.
The classroom teacher has her help tutor other students because Elizabeth is so far ahead. Already, this classroom teacher has had Elizabeth evaluated on the Woodcock Johnson Achievement test. Elizabeth is reading and comprehending at the fourth grade level and scored beyond the fourth grade level in mathematics as well.
Her classroom teacher has brought this to the attention of the principal and has recommended subject-level acceleration and possible grade-level acceleration. The principal’s response: “Our district and the school board members don’t believe in acceleration and there is no research to support it.”
The teacher was informed she needed to provide for Elizabeth’s needs in the regular classroom. Elizabeth’s father has just been laid off from his job, and there are three other children at home — a set of four-year-old twins and a newborn. They are wonderful parents but only come to school for parent conferences. They do not feel equipped to discuss Elizabeth’s characteristics and needs, and right now they are struggling to make ends meet.
While Jack has parents who jumped in to advocate for his learning needs, who will serve as Elizabeth’s advocate? And who is serving as the advocate for other high-ability learners at this elementary school as well as other elementary schools?
Will school board members advocate for these students or will biases and myths about high-ability learners rule in this school and in the district?
Will the classroom teacher, who tries to serve as Elizabeth’s advocate, bite the bullet, challenge the school principal (who obviously knows little about the research on acceleration) or will she remain silent, keep her job, do the best she can and look for another job in a school district that has a policy for high-ability learners? In her current school, all of the emphasis is placed on students who are on the “bubble” or in the middle because the pressure is great to achieve AYP.
High-ability learners, like Jack and Elizabeth, are left behind at Ellis Elementary, but does anyone care? All of the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) data and ISAT data indicate this as well, but no one at the school, district or school board levels seem to be paying attention to data on high-ability students.
These are the students who could advance the state and contribute enormously as citizens of their communities, states and the nation. These are students who could advance our civilization and contribute to the solutions of global challenges. Why do we choose to ignore their characteristics and not accommodate their learning needs?
By ignoring them, we actually make an educational decision that affects everyone’s future. We miss the bus on high-ability learning … and so do they.
References
National Association for Gifted Children, “A brief history,” 2010, retrieved from http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=607
No Child Left Behind, Public Law 107-110, The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, U.S. Department of Education, retrieved fromwww.ed.gov/policy/edsec/leg/esea02/index.html
Sandra G. Watkins and Zhaohui B. Sheng, “Are state and national standards leaving the advanced learner behind? The crisis ahead,” Forum on Public Policy, 2008, retrieved from http://forumonpublicpolicy.com/summer08papers/archivesummer08/watkins.pdf
SIDEBAR: Teacher’s child as reluctant learner
by Christina Nevitt
All I ever wanted to be growing up was a teacher. I wanted to be able to work with kids and help them learn. My first student was my brother Jeff. I pretended to be the teacher, while he played the student. I used my workbooks and my chalkboard and “taught” him. Jeff was anything but cooperative.
He was my first reluctant learner.
Since our time in the playroom, I have received a bachelor’s degree in secondary education with an endorsement in English, and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and become the parent of two wonderful boys, Noah, 10, and Drew, 6.
Drew started kindergarten last fall. He was so excited for his first day. His excitement, however, soon faded.
He would wake up in the morning, not wanting to get ready for school. “I hate school,” he would scream at me most mornings. He said he was bored. He said he already knew how to write his letters and numbers, how to cut with scissors and paste with glue. He didn’t need to go back.
At first this all made me giggle, but as time went on, and his behavior in class started to get worse, I started to worry.
My husband and I did what any parents would do: we contacted the teacher. It was hard for me to find that line between advocating for my child as a parent and using what I knew as an educator.
We were told that if he was a gifted student, he would put more effort into extending the lesson, thinking past what the teacher had asked of them. The teacher in me didn’t agree with this. I had taught enough kids to know that even the most gifted child needs a push now and then. Some would do as little work as possible, if they knew they could get away with it.
Drew had already figured that out, and he was only 5 years old. Drew needed to be challenged.
In December 2010, Drew was identified as a gifted learner, but he had already figured out that if he didn’t work hard, the teacher wouldn’t expect as much. When we had parent-teacher conferences in March we found out Drew had been moved down a reading group. Considering we had been told he was in the top reading group during the first semester, this came as a shock.
Instead of reading the words on the page, Drew would just make the story up when it was his turn to read in the group. In order not to derail the other students in the group, the teacher chose to move him down.
We decided to work on this at home. When I would read with him, he tried the same thing, but I wouldn’t let him give up. I challenged him to learn the words on the page; I took more time with him and gave him the expectation that he would read the words printed. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the words. He knew them, and if he didn’t, he knew how to sound them out.
Drew had been moved due to his behavior, not his ability. That was frustrating as a parent. My gifted child was acting out because he was bored; he needed to be challenged.
On the flip side, the teacher in me understood. Sometimes you have to do what is best for the larger group. Removing Drew kept him from being a distraction.
By fourth quarter Drew had been moved back to his original reading group, at our request. We voiced our concerns and stressed that we felt Drew needed to be pushed a little more; he couldn’t just give up when he felt the work was more difficult.
I am nervous as we go forward. As parents, how do we help Drew understand the importance of what he is learning? How do we explain that learning is hard work and there is no easy way out?
As a teacher, how do I voice our parent concerns without spouting all my education jargon at his teacher (knowing he/she took the same classes I did)?
As educators we can’t let gifted learners fall through cracks adjacent to the ones our struggling learners are trying to crawl out of. We have to find that equal balance. We have to find a way to keep all students engaged in their learning.
As for Drew, he is excited for first grade. My husband and I plan to conference with his teacher to make sure she knows his needs and personality in the hopes that he will learn how important, and fun, learning can be.
Christina Nevitt teaches journalism and photography at North Star High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is the mother of two boys, including one identified as a “gifted learner.” She also is the daughter of Journal editor Linda Dawson.