Would you consider an elementary school program that is 'not challenging enough,' in the words of one student, to be a blessing or a bane? We often focus on the kids who can't master the basics in K12 education and assume that the smart kids will do alright. They can fend for themselves. They're smart already, right?
If you suggest some kids are more gifted at learning, you’ll get the retort 'but all children are gifted.' Ask for better learners to get special teaching and now, you're elitist. Jeanne Paynter of the Maryland State Department of Education noted that 'all students have gifts, but there are some students who are ready, right now, to play varsity.' She was referring to the academically gifted. According to Louise Porter of Flinders University of South Australia, to claim that everyone is academically gifted 'is akin to claiming that everyone is six feet tall and those who aren’t are either being stubborn about it or have been measured wrongly.'
The nonacademic arena doesn't suffer that bias. We're pretty happy accepting that some kids are just naturals at sports, art, acting, being charismatic, or simply being beautiful. No one suggests the top swimmer be put in the kiddy pool to 'inspire the others.' No one gives the tennis star a badminton coach and says, 'She'll do fine. She's got natural talent.'
The children I'm taking about are identified as 'talented and gifted' (TAG). Because 'gifted' is such a loaded term, I favor 'the academically gifted'—same acronym, more precision. Children gifted with speed or strength tend to be athletic. Those who have a natural talent in art or music are called artistic. You could call TAG students 'smart,' but I know folks who are street smart, social smart, book smart. Being academically gifted isn't necessarily being smart; it's having an astonishing capacity to learn.
The provision of teaching to academically gifted children rests on many myths about how they learn. We are falsely confident that smart kids will do OK on their own. We assume that gifted students love school. We have a naive view that the presence of smart kids will help inspire and motivate the other students. We hope that teachers challenge all students, even when class sizes grow. Those myths lead to policy that leaves the academically gifted behind, yet we are surprised when these smart kids disengage and fail to reach their potential.
Myths and realities
Most people accept that a child who is bored in school will not learn. What comes to mind is an ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) child unable to focus on the material or a slow learner who can't understand and gives up trying. Picture instead a bright child who has to go over again material already mastered. Imagine yourself having to repeat second grade as an adult. After receiving sheet after sheet of subtraction problems, would you be engaged, a high scorer, an active participant in class?
Exceptional learners exhibit a wide variety of traits, which often include advanced vocabulary, intensity, a highly developed sense of curiosity, keen observation skills, and an unusual sense of humor. Teaching TAG children therefore requires a fundamentally different approach in the day-to-day classroom. You can't tell a TAG child (or special education or autistic child) 'just sit through the seven-hour class with everyone else, then learn on your own time.' Oddly, TAG’s goals, its funding, and its needs are more in line with Special Education than with conventional comprehensive classwork.
The Maryland state code formally defines a TAG student as an
elementary or secondary student who is identified by professionally qualified individuals as having outstanding talent and performing, or showing the potential for performing, at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with other students of a similar age, experience or environment.
The code notes further that 'a gifted and talented student needs different services beyond those provided by the regular school program in order to develop the student's potential.'
Getting those different services is a problem for parents. TAG just isn't on the radar of most schools, which subscribe to the myth that smart kids can fend for themselves. As long as TAG is considered special or optional, our children will not get the education they deserve. We need to insist that TAG is not optional. TAG isn't just an advanced curriculum, but an inquiry-based learning approach—even when the material is not more advanced than the comprehensive class.
Academically gifted programs are often confused with honors programs, but the two are distinct. Honors programs typically involve more complex work or work at a higher grade level. Academically gifted programs involve a different approach to learning entirely.
One tool for teaching the gifted is differentiated education, which is also used in regular classrooms. According to C. A. Tomlinson, 'differentiation is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that values the individual and can be translated into classroom practice in many ways.' Differentiation addresses the same curricula at different levels for different students in terms of the content (what they learn) and the process (how they learn). A regular student may be asked to write a book report about what happened in the story, whereas a gifted student will be asked to extrapolate what happens to the characters after the story ends. For most students, the teacher presents material for the students to learn. For academically gifted students, the teacher suggests a path for the child to explore. In an address to a group of parents of TAG children, D. Arbogast noted that 'all people have the ability to increase their capacity. Not all start in the same place, not all end in the same place.'
Formal techniques in differentiation include pre-assessment, acceleration, tiered assignments, questioning techniques, independent study, and enrichment activities. But let's be pragmatic here. If a class has 2 TAG students and 30 comprehensive students, the odds that a handful of students will get differentiated instruction from a harried teacher is low. The bulk of teacher time is taken up dealing with poor performers and behavioral issues. As a Baltimore County teacher once noted, if she has one rebellious student, she's OK but if there are two, she shuttles between them and the class is derailed.
A real and testable phenomenon
About 10% of the population is TAG, according to Prince George’s County, Maryland, where every first grader in the county (private or public) is tested. That 10% stays the same regardless of income level, socio-economic status, language barriers, race, color, creed. TAG is a real phenomenon. It's not elitist, and it's testable.
But won't gifted students do just fine on their own? Sure, if 'bored, frustrated, and tuning out' means 'fine.'
Don't teachers challenge every student? Not unless they change the curricula for 27 students to account for the 3 gifted ones. But teachers don't often have the time or the training to do that sort of differentiated education. It's better and cheaper to put a gifted-trained teacher with the gifted students and to put a comprehensive-trained teacher with the regular classroom.
Don't gifted children provide a role model, a challenge to the others? I don't see smart kids getting respect. Instead, peers say 'it's easy for you because you're smart.' Going back to sports analogies, is it heartening when a truly gifted varsity-level athlete steamrolls you? Being in the presence of talent is not motivating. The best challenge is what's within your grasp.
But in these tough economic times, can we afford special programs for gifted . . . Wait! Gifted education doesn't cost more than regular education, any more than teaching English costs more than teaching social studies. It's an approach to teaching, not more gear or books. In fact, under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), schools with all-gifted classrooms get less funding than an underperforming school because they don’t need specialists.
It turns out schools that are doing well and supporting their academically gifted tend to get less funding than Title I schools. There is punishment for schools that succeed. Funding tends to go to fix problems, not sustain strong performers. There is also a pile-on effect suffered by good schools. Parents will work to transfer their students (rightfully so) from a low-achieving school to a high-achieving school, resulting in overcrowding.
In a perfect world, every TAG child would have access to wonderful TAG services. However, achieving that ideal is really hard—for political, administrative, and financial reasons. Each principal and each teacher would have to buy into the idea that smart kids need help. TAG also requires all teachers be trained in differentiated education—and supplied with small enough class sizes to practice it. Logistically, it's easier to train a few teachers in TAG and differentiation, then concentrate the students (either locally or county-wide) in clusters.
I live in Prince George's County, Maryland, which has 12 000 identified TAG students. Just 2400 of them—20%—get a good education with TAG-trained teachers at the 10 TAG centers. The county runs a lottery to decide who gets into those TAG centers. The rest get a mixed bag of services ranging from one hour a week of supplementary teaching to TAG instruction in the classroom. Now the county is thinking of charging TAG students who need to be bused to the centers. The joke here is that to get a good academically gifted education, you have to be smart, lucky, and rich. And if you're all that, who needs the education?
TAG kids learn differently—in leaps and bounds—and can often outpace their teachers. To keep them engaged in school and let them reach their high potential, we need to provide appropriate teachers and appropriate education. If we fail to provide the academically gifted with the teaching and challenges they need, we risk their becoming disengaged and bored. Then, as a society, we all lose out. These are the same children who will one day help define our future. 'We don't ask for more than our share, said a group of TAG students, 'only that which meets our needs.'
That sounds like a smart idea to me.
References
- J. Paynter, address to Maryland Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education (2011).
- L. Porter, Twelve Myths of Gifted Education , (2007).
- Common Myths, National Association for Gifted Children, (2010).
- Education: Title 8. Special Programs for Exceptional Children, The Annotated Code of Maryland, section A8-202 (2003).
- C. A. Tomlinson, Quality Curriculum and Instruction for Highly Able Students, Theory into Practice 44(2), 160 (2005).
- D. Arbogast, address to the 2010–11 PGTAG Annual Meeting.
- T. Jackson, T., Prince George’s County Public Schools Talented and Gifted Programs and Services, address to the 2010–11 PGTAG Annual Meeting (2011).
Alex 'Sandy' Antunes is an astrophysicist enjoying the dark world of science business development as a freelancer. His personal science venture is the picosatellite.
