NCLB Leaves Giftted Students Behind

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

 SCHOOLS, FACING TIGHT BUDGETS, LEAVE GIFTED PROGRAMS BEHIND
New York Times -- March 2, 2004
by Diana Jean Schemo

Mountain Grove, Mo.  Before her second birthday, Audrey Walker 
recognized sequences of five colors. When she was 6, her father, 
Michael, overheard her telling a little boy: "No, no, no, Hunter, you 
don't understand. What you were seeing was a flashback."

At school, Audrey quickly grew bored as the teacher drilled letters and 
syllables until her classmates caught on. She flourished, instead, in a 
once-a-week class for gifted and talented children where she could learn 
as fast as her nimble brain could take her.

But in September, Mountain Grove, a remote rural community in the Ozarks 
where nearly three in four students live in poverty, eliminated all of 
its programs for the district's 50 or so gifted children like Audrey, 
who is 8 now. Struggling with shrinking revenues and new federal 
mandates that focus on improving the test scores of the lowest-achieving 
pupils, Mountain Grove and many other school districts across the 
country have turned to cutting programs for their most promising students.

"Rural districts like us, we've been literally bleeding to death," said 
Gary Tyrrell, assistant superintendent of the Mountain Grove School 
District, which has 1,550 students. The formula for cutting back in hard 
times was straightforward, if painful, Mr. Tyrrell said: Satisfy federal 
and state requirements first. Then, "Do as much as we can for the 
majority and work on down."

Under that kind of a formula, programs for gifted and talented children 
have become especially vulnerable.

Unlike services for disabled children, programs for gifted children have 
no single federal agency to track them. A survey by the National 
Association for Gifted Children found that 22 states did not contribute 
toward the costs of programs for gifted children, and five other states 
spent less than $250,000.

Since that survey, released in 2002, the outlook for programs for the 
gifted has grown harsher. In Michigan, state aid for gifted students 
fell from more than $4 million a year to $250,000. Illinois, which was 
spending $19 million a year on programs for fast learners, eliminated 
state financing for them. New York was spending $14 million a year on 
education for the gifted but has now cut all money earmarked for gifted 
children, saying districts should pay for them out of block grants. 
Nearly one in four school districts in Connecticut have eliminated their 
programs for gifted students.

The new federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind, "has 
almost taken gifted off the radar screen in terms of people being 
worried about that group of learners," said Joyce L. Vantassel-Baska, 
executive director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of 
William and Mary.

"In a tight budget environment," Ms. Vantassel-Baska said, "the 
decisions made about what gets dropped or not funded tend to disfavor 
the smaller programs."

Missouri was reimbursing districts for 75 percent of the cost of 
educating gifted children but has reduced the contribution to 58 
percent. In Mountain Grove, an aging base of voters rejected a proposed 
tax levy in February. Schools are now planning to cut seven teachers in 
the elementary grades, public financing of team sports and 
transportation service within the town's boundaries.

"There are some mandates that you must do from the feds and the state," 
Mr. Tyrrell said, citing programs for disabled children as an example. 
"Those will be the last to go."

No Child Left Behind is silent on the education of gifted children. 
Under the law, schools must test students annually in reading and math 
from third grade to eighth grade, and once in high school.

Schools receiving federal antipoverty money must show that more students 
each year are passing standardized tests or face expensive and 
progressively more severe consequences.

As long as students pass the exams, the federal law offers no rewards 
for raising the scores of high achievers, or punishment if their 
progress lags.

Eugene Hickok, acting deputy secretary for elementary and secondary 
education at the federal Education Department, called the closing of 
programs for highly intelligent children an unfortunate, "unintended 
consequence" of No Child Left Behind. "Laws by definition are rather 
blunt instruments," Dr. Hickok said.

He said he did not believe that No Child Left Behind alone was 
responsible, adding that some districts blamed the law unfairly. "It's 
running for cover to say we can't deal with your needs because our 
fundamental requirement is to serve these other kids," Dr. Hickok said.

He said the administration was not considering revising the law to 
protect programs for gifted children, calling such programs a matter of 
"state and local control."

The tough choices, in Mountain Grove and districts around the country, 
are fueling emotional debates about educational fairness and where 
districts should focus limited resources. Among some educators and 
parents, special consideration for gifted children appears to attract 
resentment, and here in Mountain Grove, the parents of gifted children, 
while concerned, seem reluctant to demand extra enrichment.

Bridget Williams, the principal of Mountain Grove Middle School, 
maintains that very bright children do not deserve specially tailored 
classes, especially when the district is focusing on bringing all 
children up to a minimum standard of competence.

"Are they more important than a special-ed kid?" Ms. Williams asked in 
an interview with other administrators. Some teachers did not like to 
release their smartest students from regular classes, and one perennial 
dispute involved whether or not students who attended the classes for 
the gifted should have to make up homework from their regular classrooms.

Ms. Williams said it was not so much the education, but merely status, 
that gifted children lost when their program was cut in September. "They 
lost the title," she said.

Others contend that cutting programs for such students threatens the 
nation's future by stunting the intellectual growth of the next 
generation of innovators. Not only do gifted children learn faster, but 
often they learn in a different way, experts say.

"Many of them will never, ever achieve their potential without some type 
of advanced learning opportunities and resources," said Joseph S. 
Renzulli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and 
Talented at the University of Connecticut. "Equity goes both ways. It 
means we're going to accommodate the needs of students, whether they're 
struggling, average or above-average learners."

Carolyn Groves, who taught gifted education here for seven years, 
fashioned creative projects intended to stretch the critical thinking of 
her students. One unit put "Nursery Rhymes on Trial," while in another, 
middle-school students created the government of Utopia. "Mind benders" 
gave students systematic rules for deconstructing challenging 
mathematical questions.

"People say, `These kids are smart. They're going to make it anyway,' " 
Ms. Groves said. But experts say that gifted children can easily grow 
bored and alienated.

"These are the kids who are either going to turn out to be nuclear 
scientists or Unabombers," said Ms. Groves, who now teaches high school 
remedial students at the vocational school. "It all depends on which way 
they're led."

Some parents of Mountain Grove's brightest children try to make up for 
the elimination of programs for the gifted. Mr. Walker and his wife, 
Marilyn, shuttle Audrey to dance and Spanish lessons. They encourage her 
interest in filmmaking by helping her develop ideas for movies she 
shoots on the family's video camera. Mr. Walker said he worried, though, 
about other promising children whose parents were too poor or overworked 
to offer their own children similar enrichment.

These days, Mr. Walker said, Audrey no longer enjoys school and 
frequently asks to stay home.

In small towns like Mountain Grove, Mr. Walker said, "a tremendous 
amount of frustration can build up in these kids, because they're 
different, but they don't know why." When she participated in the 
classes for the gifted, Audrey felt less isolated for her bookishness 
and learned to manage frustration that used to crush her, when her 
efforts did not live up to her vision.

On a deeper level, Mr. Walker said he worried about the message Mountain 
Grove was sending to its most promising students. "Yes, they may achieve 
great things," Mr. Walker said. "But I don't think they'll achieve the 
greatest things that they're capable of. It's saying it's all right to 
aim for mediocrity."



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/education/02GIFT.html