Here is the Public Teachers approach to gifted and talented students programs in a suburb of Seattle. Quotas, Quotas, Quotas...
Federal Way widens search for gifted kids
By Linda Shaw
Seattle Times staff reporter
Only a handful of students at Lake Grove Elementary used to qualify each spring for the gifted and talented program in the Federal Way School District.
This year, however, the parents of 27 students got calls inviting their children to a new gifted class at the school.
In the name of equity, Federal Way is changing the way it selects students for advanced classes, relying less on tests and more on teacher observations and student work to look harder for students, especially students of color, who have been overlooked before.
The district started the changes in two Federal Way elementary schools this year — Lake Grove and Panther Lake. Next year, the changes will expand to all elementary schools.
If Lake Grove's experience holds elsewhere, Federal Way may soon become one of the few districts in the state where classes for gifted students are as ethnically diverse as their student population as a whole.
Some worry that the changes, which include expanding the definition of gifted to include those with special abilities in art and leadership, may dilute the value of the classes for students who are the most academically advanced. But they also say Federal Way's efforts are laudable and worth watching.
"It sounds like a worthy experiment," said Nancy Robinson, professor emeritus at the University of Washington and former director of the Robinson Center for Young Scholars, which helps highly capable students enter college early.
Until now, Federal Way, like most districts, relied heavily on tests to select students for its Gifted and Talented Education (G.A.T.E.) program. Students who scored the highest in the most subjects usually were the ones to enroll in a full-day program at a handful of schools — about 250 students each year. Another 500 students spent a day, or part of a day, in an enrichment class, said Gwen Knechtel, G.A.T.E. program manager.
Yet, in Federal Way and most districts, white students and sometimes Asian Americans tend to be overrepresented in gifted classes when compared with their numbers in the district as a whole.
In Washington state overall, black students make up about 6 percent of fourth-grade classes, but only 2.6 percent of the fourth-graders in gifted classes are black, according to estimates by the Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission. White students account for 70 percent of the fourth-graders, but 81 percent of fourth-graders in gifted programs are white.
That can give an impression that white students are smarter, said Karen Dickinson, Federal Way's assistant director of curriculum and instruction.
"I don't think that's what we want to be saying ... or anyone should be saying," she said.
Dickinson and others think the tests used to select gifted students tend to favor those from middle- and upper-class backgrounds.
"Whatever it is that causes kids from poor backgrounds not to perform well on tests is obviously what's keeping some of them out of gifted programs," said Joseph Renzulli, director of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented in Connecticut.
"Life would be a lot easier and identification would be a lot tidier if we could say, 'Let's look at the test score and see who's gifted,' " he said. "I don't think that's the way it is."
Paul Slocumb, co-author of "Removing the Mask: Giftedness in Poverty," says school districts shouldn't ignore students who score high on tests — but shouldn't stop with testing.
"There are other children who are equally as bright; it just looks a little different," he said. "They're a little harder to find, but they're there."
For the Lake Grove class, students were selected based on a review of scores on district exams, teacher observations and examples of their work. The three areas were weighted equally.
Teachers were trained to look for aptitude beyond the traditional areas of reading, math and writing. The Lake Grove class, for example, includes students with leadership skills, strong verbal abilities and some whom the district calls "gifted underachievers" — talented students who don't always do their work or do only the work that interests them.
The class is 52 percent white and 48 percent minority, compared with 48 percent white and 52 percent minority for the rest of the school.
Many of the students — whites and minorities — say they were surprised to be asked to enroll.
"It's cool that I'm smart," said Shaylee Jackson, 9, who is white. Until this year, she said, "I didn't feel smart."
Karen Mauthe, an articulate 11-year-old with a background that's Native American, Latino and white, said the class changed her whole attitude about school.
Before, she was bored, and when she got bored she'd crumple paper or fail to listen — and get in trouble. When it came to math, she felt dumb.
Now, she says, she's the first one to raise her hand, even during math lessons.
"I feel smarter and better about myself," she said.
Not all the students have excelled academically, said teacher Mindy Thompson, but all are above grade level in at least one area. "We're widening our embrace," she said. "We're gifting them, in my opinion. We're giving them confidence."
The district hopes that confidence will carry into middle and high school and that more minorities will enroll in the most challenging courses.
"We believe that, starting at this level, we can create a cadre of kids able to take advanced-placement classes," said Dickinson, the assistant curriculum director.
"We hope to do this for all children, but you have to start with something very overt and very symbolic."
However laudable Federal Way's goals, however, some wonder if classes for the gifted are the place to pursue them.
Robinson, who has worked in gifted education for decades, says she's always leery of opening gifted classes to those whose strengths aren't academic.
"When a child is artistically gifted, a regular class is not necessarily inappropriate for them because classes are not about art. They're about reading, math and social studies," she said.
The fact that students of color are underrepresented in gifted classes reflects larger societal issues, she said, including "the reality that children are different in the opportunities they've had, and therefore what they're ready for."
"I think we're asking programs for gifted children to solve problems that our society has not been able to manage."
Federal Way knows its program will be challenging for teachers.
Along with changing the G.A.T.E. selection process, the district is expanding its full-day gifted program to all its elementary schools, and each of those classes will include students from grades three, four and five.
Thompson, the Lake Grove teacher, says it's not easy to teach a class whose students have such a wide range of ages and abilities. But it's not impossible.
Rather than teaching to the middle, she says, she teaches to the top, then builds bridges to help other students get to that level. And much of the instruction is tailored to each student.
On a recent morning, a group of fifth-graders sat in a circle in the back, discussing a book they'd all read. Other students worked individually at their desks, including Mauthe, who sang quietly as she looked up definitions of words.
Thompson brought a few students at a time to the front to talk about how to write a summary of a book. After each group, she circled the room, checking to make sure every child was doing something productive.
Federal Way isn't alone in its efforts to diversify its gifted classes. Puyallup, Tacoma, Kent and other school districts also work to ensure that students of color don't get overlooked.
Barbara Maurer, an education consultant who helped start one of Seattle's programs for highly capable students, says all districts are struggling with the ethnic makeup of their gifted programs.
And Federal Way's approach is not the only way to nurture the academic potential of more students. Bellevue, for example, is working to increase the number of minorities in advanced-placement programs by strengthening the curriculum for all students.
But Maurer and others say what Federal Way is doing is exciting and worth watching.
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