D181 Gifted Program Criticized by External Evaluators
The evaluation team hired by the district suggested the discontinuation of the ACE program and the creation of a clearer district philosophy about what makes a gifted student.
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The identification process and curriculum of District 181’s current gifted program are “not defensible,” according to an external evaluation conducted by Dr. Tonya R. Moon and her team from the University of Virginia.
Moon and colleague Dr. Catherine M. Brighton presented the findings of the team, which was hired by District 181 last fall to provide an unbiased state-of-the-program report, during Monday night’s District 181 Board of Education meeting at Elm School in Burr Ridge.
Among the Moon team’s recommendations were that the Affective and Cognitive Enrichment (ACE) program, which takes gifted students away from their home schools one day per week for specialized instruction, be discontinued; that the district establish task force to develop a more clear philosophy and direction for the gifted program and how gifted students are identified; and that the district eventually hire an administrator whose sole responsibility would be to oversee the gifted program.
The evaluation presented Monday was not a finalized report and the Moon team will, based on feedback from the board and administration, present more information to the board at a future meeting—most likely the Feb. 13 Committee of the Whole meeting.
Brighton, who talked mostly about the evaluation of District 181’s gifted curriculum, said the elementary ACE program for gifted students is a “part-time solution for a full-time need.”
The program is problematic, she said, because it crams gifted education for selected students all into one day a week and there is little communication between ACE program staff and general education staff. Brighton said home-school teachers were not very clear on what their ACE students did when they went off to Monroe School, where the program is housed.
“It’s really impossible to look at the gifted program without considering the general education program,” Brighton said.
The team’s report indicated that though differentiation within the classroom for students of differing achievement levels was discussed on the district’s website, there was no evidence of it during the team’s two-day visit.
“The lack of differentiation of instruction in both the general and gifted classrooms ... prevents the district from achieving its full potential and, consequently, does not develop students’ potential to their fullest,” the report reads. “We recommend that district-wide conceptual-level curriculum be developed at each grade level in each content area.”
Board President Michael Nelson later disputed the Moon team's conclusion that there's no differentiation in district classrooms.
Brighton suggested that District 181 look to increase the rigor and challenge of the general education curriculum meant for all students. The team's report also recommended exploring the possibility of accelerating the entire district's math program by one grade level.
Who makes the cut?
Moon, who mostly spoke on gifted-program assessment and student identification, said there’s no standard definition in the gifted-education community of what exactly “gifted” is, so District 181 must come up with its own philosophy on what makes a gifted student, and implement a definition that can be reliably measured so students are in the right places.
“Without that clear vision and clear definition, you don’t know who you’re measuring or what you’re measuring,” Moon said.
Currently, the district relies on external testing (SCAT and STEP test) and teacher observations to select gifted students. Students are evaluated at the end of second grade for possible gifted placement in third through fifth grade, then another evaluation takes place at the end of fifth grade to see if any new students should be placed in the gifted program at middle school.
The Moon team’s written report (which can be found in full here on the District 181 website) recommended that if the district continues to use external testing to select gifted students, it needs to establish through empirical evidence that students who do not make the cut on those tests don’t, in fact, succeed in environments like that of the ACE program and the district’s Enriched Language Arts (ELA) program.
Moon’s report says the district also needs to show that teacher observations have been an accurate predictor of whether a student will be high- or low-achieving.
Board supports change, differs on route
There was much discussion of Moon’s findings among board members Monday night and little action. The board decided it would hear the finalized report before making any decisions.
All board members seemed to be in general agreement that the gifted program needed to change, but several, including Board President Michael Nelson, were wary of establishing the philosophy task force suggested by Moon.
Yvonne Mayer said the district has been through that process several times over the past 20 years with regard to the gifted program and it has produced no results.
“The members end up catering to the loudest person in the room, or the pushiest person in the room, or the person with the best relationship with the district,” Mayer said.
Mayer recommended that the district hire a contracted gifted-program administrator in advance of any decisions to get the program revamp started instead of a task force.
Superintendant Dr. Renée Schuster, though, said it’s important that, either through a task force or a survey, it's clear the community is behind the philosophy of the gifted program going forward. Schuster said the community needs to be able to voice its opinion on whether the currently “exclusive” ACE and ELA programs just need some adjusting, or if a new, “inclusive” program should be implemented.
All board members said they were not opposed to a more inclusive program.
Several board members also asked that possible alternatives from comparable, high-achieving districts be mentioned in Moon's final report. Mayer and Brendan Heneghan were among the board members who, in addition to Moon's recommendations on what needs to be fixed, wanted suggestions on what that fix might look like.
Steve Woodward
4:22 pm on Tuesday, January 24, 2012
What is worse than a "gifted" program that does not specifically define "gifted" and that has core programs that are "not defensible"? How about this: A district that claims to serve the educational needs of all students but does not do the one thing that achieves this end. According to the Patch dispatch above, "The team's report indicated that though differentiation within the classroom for students of differing achievement levels was discussed on the district’s website, there was no evidence of it during the (evaluation) team’s two-day visit." No evidence of it.
Rebecca Wear Robinson
10:41 am on Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I commend the BOE for having the courage to address, once again, what has been a very contentious issue. The outside consultant's results were unequivocal. The current program is indefensible. There is no clear definition of 'gifted'. Tests used to identify students were discredited by the organizations that developed them and have not been used consistently since 1996. And most concerning, our curriculum is behind by 10-30 years and differentiation in the classroom was not identified. No one is arguing that even in a high-achieving district such as ours there are still a very small group of students who require exceptional challenge, but the existing program is not even meeting the needs of those children adequately. The BOE committed publicly to following through on the recommendations of the consultants, I hope they have the courage to do the right thing. To eliminate the existing ACE and advanced math/ELA programs and to focus their efforts in 2012/13 in developing a curriculum that not just meets 'best practices' nationally, but becomes THE 'best practice' nationally. To coach our outstanding teaching staff in differentiation in the classroom. To then identify in a defensible and documented manner which students require additional challenge. Our district is should set 'best practice'. Don't all of our children deserve that?
Ann Mueller
1:19 pm on Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I sincerely hope that the D181 community will now recognize that there has been absolutely no educational leadership or accountability in D181 for the last 6 years. It is now up to the community, parents and non-parents, to do something about this mess. This is what happens when the community doesn't pay attention to what is actually happening and just sits back and expects the right things to be happening. As I sat at the meeting Monday night, I could just feel my property values declining! I'm just glad my children were educated in D181 in the '90's. The students may have been crowded then, but there was a current, higher level of learning going on!
Ann Mueller
Patricia Orler
3:16 pm on Wednesday, January 25, 2012
In response to Anne Mueller's comment. A group of parents has been very active. They have requested meetings with the Administration for at least 3 years and have raised many of the same concerns that were raised by Dr. Moon's report. The District has not clearly defined what it means to be gifted in our District for at least 15 years. I raised the issue 15 years ago and suggested that there was no established connection to the test scores and the needs to be addressed by the gifted program. I also raised concerns about the validity of the tests that were used for identification. I have been involved and so have many parents. We were not included on the gifted task force. We tried to be heard, but no one wanted to listen.
District 181 Parent
5:17 pm on Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Over the past ten years, while other districts have invested in differentiation and more rigorous higher learning for all, D181 has invested millions focusing on testing,
and separating kids according to false ability labels measured by outdated tests proven unreliable and not recommended by experts.
Ann Mueller
6:13 pm on Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Pat Orler's comments relate exactly to what I was indicating in my comments. Pat's group obviously was not listened to by the D181 Administration and, therefore, were not allowed to have any impact on D181's curriculum development. The problem in D181, as the previous D181 parent has stated, covers far more than the gifted program. With a totally inept superintendent for one year, an interim superintendent for two years who did nothing and now no one in the D181 Administration that is a curriculum expert (the general curriculum and most specifically the gifted program has not been altered or improved under the current superintendent in the last 11/2 years) exists to bring D181 up to speed. As I mentioned before, there has been NO educational leadership in D181 for 6 years and there is no one currently in the district to improve the situation. I will remind community members of Dr. Christine Rauscher, who was the Asst. Supt. for Learning under Supt. Hendrix. Dr. Hendrix's experience and style was that of a"manager." However, he hired to his "weakness" and brought Dr. Rauscher to D181. She was a nationally recognized curriculum specialist and had taught on the university level. She did amazing things in D181, including implementing the very first reading recovery program in the district. That is the kind of person D181 needs to get it up to speed in all areas of learning. It is not going to happen with the current personnel in the district.
District 181 Parent
9:05 am on Thursday, January 26, 2012
Ann Muller, I fully agree with your assessment of what has happened to this district and what we need to do...hire a nationally recognized curriculum specialist. Stop this focus on gifted which has led to, in Dr. Moon's words, "educational malpractice". I would also add that it is our superior teachers who, with hands tied, have held this district together. I know three at Madison school who would make excellent administrators. Parents must encourage the board to hire from within.
Joshua Raymond
2:26 pm on Tuesday, January 31, 2012
In my interactions with many parents of gifted students across the US, I have met two who felt that differentiation in the standard classroom was effective at their schools. One was at a charter school and the other at a private academy with an 8:1 student to teacher ratio. Having gifted students in the standard classroom makes differentiation significantly harder for the teacher as it means additional lesson plans, often one for each gifted child. Education for typical students, special needs students, and gifted students usually improves when gifted students are moved to a separate classroom or cluster grouped as it reduces the number of academic levels that a teacher must prepare for and teach to. See http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED429389.pdf
Jeffrey Bennett wrote an excellent article entitled 'Differentiated Instruction: Easier in Theory than in Practice' at http://southorange.patch.com/articles/differentiated-instruction-easier-in-theory-than-in-practice
Your classrooms are not atypical in lacking differentiation. Karen Westburg's study at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented found students experienced no instructional or curricular differentiation in 84% of the activities in which they participated.
Good luck on however your board chooses to proceed.
District 181 Parent
2:40 pm on Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The indefensible, unethical use of assessments identifying students as having a need for special services and isolation makes all arguments for keeping the gifted and tiered program null and void. The assessments used in no way measure gifted and talented yet millions were spent on specialists servicing this random small population. It has been a massive fiduciary breach.
Joshua Raymond
2:51 pm on Tuesday, January 31, 2012
If the problem is with the assessments, why not fix the assessments or choose better ones?
Rebecca Wear Robinson
2:43 pm on Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The article describing the research performed by The National Research Center for Gifted and Talented provides some interesting insights, the most relevant of which, I believe, is that when teachers expect all students to reach a higher level of achievement, the students generally achieve this higher level. I would be interested in seeing a parallel study on a 'regular' classroom, assuming that teachers have appropriately challenging, relevant curriculum, reasonable class sizes and balanced classes (not heavily skewed towards any group of students requiring the majority of the teacher's attention or with sufficient aids for those higher-need students), such as is done in Winnetka and Oak Brook's school districts. It would also be interesting to see a comparable study regarding differentiation and/or clustering that was produced by an organization that is focusing on the achievements of all students without the bias towards 'gifted and talented' students implicit in the research organization's focus. Does anyone have such a study that they could share?
Joshua Raymond
3:51 pm on Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Rebecca, if you read through the research, you will see that such a study was performed against a control school that initially outscored the treatment school. The comparison school was chosen because of similar demographics. I'm not sure how one would measure teachers' expectations for students.
The study does discuss the effect of cluster grouping on all students and notes that for high percentage of all students increased an academic level (47% in 2000, 34% in 2001), but a small percent did decrease (3% in 2000, 9% in 2001). There are also comparisons on the averages of all students between the schools.
Good luck finding such a study by a non-GT organization. GT is the red-headed stepchild of education. Most teaching colleges don't even offer a single course in it, where the current trend is de-leveling and differentiation. While cluster grouping is not tracking, dividing students into levels goes against current policy trends even though the data supports it. I hope you will review the study thoroughly and not dismiss it simply due to authorship.
We have one elementary school our district that uses cluster grouping with great success, but the district politics have prevented other schools from implementing it. Whenever parents at that school have objected, the principal shows them how scores have improved.
Ann Mueller
10:19 am on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
I am interested in knowing which site in D181 uses "cluster grouping with great success." Joshua, is D181 the district that you are referencing? Thanks, Ann Mueller
Joshua Raymond
11:11 am on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Ann, I'm involved nationally on G/T advocacy, so your G/T changes interested me. My local school district has 13 elementary schools ranging from the 90th to 99th percentile with one implementing cluster grouping. Data analysis of schools in our district has shown a rise in test scores across the board for this school since the change to cluster grouping.
While cluster grouping has good evidence supporting its use, it is very difficult to get implemented in schools. It takes a strong leader with a commitment to evaluating the data. Too often the concern is placed on how will grouping students affect their self esteem. While this appears to be a legitimate concern at face value, when students in the low and low average groups actually begin achieving as opposed to feeling lost throughout the entire instruction time, their self-esteem rises. It is more the parents' egos that get in the way when their children are assessed into low and low average groups and you need a principal and superintendent who are willing to state that a child's improved education is more important than a parent's bruised ego.
Ann Mueller
1:06 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Joshua, I agree with you that cluster grouping can have very positive results. I saw this in action at both my 25 year-old daughter's elementary school and then when I was working at one of the elementary buildings in D181. Especially at the school where I was working, it was the parents who complained about the cluster grouping in math at the 4th and 5th grade levels and how it would affect their students' self-esteem and their later placement in the middle school math program. However, if a lower level student is able to achieve in a cluster setting in math and not be frustrated by being exposed to rather difficult material that is delivered in a fast paced way, then the cluster approach increases a student's self-esteem because they have achieved success by mastering the math material. Parents all too often are so concerned by the "cluster lable" of their student and, therefore, transfer this negative way of thinking to their student(s.) If a teacher can group students together who are of a similar level and needs based on actual performance data, it is easier for the teacher to service these students and the students end up working with other students with similar questions and levels of understanding. There is a huge need for a qualified assessment professional in a district of D181's level if testing is to be interpreted and applied correctly. Ann Mueller