Latest Gifted/Talented Meeting Leaves Parents With Questions
This past Thursday evening, the cafetorium at Horace Mann was standing-room-only for Lakewood City Schools' State of the Gifted and Talented program presentation. It was clear that this program is very important to families who have benefited from it in the past and are concerned about its current state, and families who are new to the school system.
Director of Teaching and Learning, Pam Griebel's power point presentation was an overview of the work of the three subcommittees: In short, the Assessment and Identification group is working on a way to identify students. The Service Model group acknowledges that parents want to keep our self-contained gifted classes, but other models are being examined, like "Cluster groups" which means putting kids together that excel in one subject or another. The Philosophy group had a mission statement which was posted in front of the assembled group but not discussed.
After all of this time, the assembled group expected some details. Some power point slides were missing, especially the very important one that dealt with Elementary Schools, and some of the slides were labeled "Westlake schools" giving everyone the impression that we were getting a second-hand presentation.
There were no handouts describing any potential changes. Parents were asked to fill out sheets of paper labeled “Strengths” and “Weaknesses” of the program themselves. If they had questions, they were directed to write them on post-it notes and put them on a board.
The GT committee has been meeting during class-time, requiring teachers to leave their classes to substitute teachers often, which had given parents the impression that the input of the teachers was important enough to disrupt their children’s education. Teachers' input was not in evidence at this presentation, in fact, teachers and parent members of the committee addressed the assembled parents during the question and answer session, asking for support of their ideas, giving the impression that their ideas were not being taken into account during their committee meetings.
Parents who have students in the GT program came to find out what the problem is. Many parents have been pleased with the education their children have received and wondered why it needed to be "fixed" if it wasn't broken.
In the past several years, the second-grade gifted program was eliminated, and last year the self-contained shared 2nd/3rd grade and 4th/5th grade classrooms were eliminated. Teachers have been taken from middle school positions to fill newly created single gifted classrooms in elementary schools, when before, one teacher taught both. Middle school GT teachers who were moved have not been replaced, rather, our current middle school GT teachers have had to add grade levels -- teachers who were teaching 7th and 8th now also must teach 6th grade gifted, and in some cases, teachers have to leave Harding or Garfield during the day to go to the other middle school, with even more classes added to their schedules.
These changes were made without consulting parents, and many said in the small groups that they’d expected that this would be the first subject addressed.
The next thing parents assumed would be addressed is the reason that there is a need for an improved program. Mrs. Greibel made it clear that the District must cast a wider net to include more students but not why there was a reason to change our assessment, service or philosophy models.
Much of the "Assessment and Identification" presentation was spent explaining to parents that there is a difference between "Bright" children and "Gifted" children, i.e.: "Bright children know the answer while Gifted children ask questions about the answer." "Bright children are well-organized. Gifted children can be very disorganized." "Bright children study hard and get the right answer. Gifted children know the answer without working hard and want to move on." At this point parents began grumbling about the seeming arbitrariness of the descriptions. It seemed to be laying groundwork for an attempt to skim the very top of our GT students off the top for self-contained units, and to put the rest of the merely “Bright” kids back into regular classrooms where they could have their needs met in “Clusters” and improve the test scores. This began to seem harmful to both groups the more Mrs Griebel outlined the differences, as if children with very high IQ’s should not be with other children who are only “Bright” as they cannot relate to them. It seemed that an idea to remove them from the mainstream of other bright children was afoot. If children with learning disabilities mainstream in our classrooms, by the same principle, children who are very bright, rather than being singled out and labeled as “geniuses” are currently “mainstreaming” with other only average bright kids. In fact, many would describe that scenario as what is so great about Lakewood’s program, particularly in an elementary school environment where socialization is so important.
The larger point is that if this is the idea, why the circling of it, with somewhat offensive descriptions of “Bright” versus “Gifted” without following through with why the assembled parents were being subjected to this?
The fact that the Value Added Measure was never discussed at this meeting, as one of, if not the main reason our Gifted program is being reworked, was also discussed at parent tables. A lot of time was given to Lakewood’s low scores on the Gifted Value Added measure when Mrs. Griebel made her presentation to the Board several months ago. Several parents proposed that since the state requires that districts identify Gifted students, but not that they serve them, if Lakewood is getting a bad grade because our “Gifted” kids aren’t “Gifted” enough, but they are receiving wonderful educations, a solution would be to stop calling any of them “Gifted.” Call them “Top Ten Testers” and they can be put together in classrooms so they aren’t bored and they aren’t disruptive in regular classrooms. Then they can all be tested as non-gifted kids, which will cause our scores to be much higher in Performance and we can end the official gifted program and dispense with its being graded.
Most of those in attendance agreed that if this discussion is actually about test scores, it’s time to respect the people who will be affected most, and level with them about what’s really happening here and why. If it is about more than that, detailed descriptions of what is going on would correct that impression. Parents understand that these are very difficult times for local public school districts who are under the big gun of the State of Ohio. If parents weren’t regarded as a problem they could be a big part of the solution.
I’ve only been able to cover a small portion of what was said by parents at the meeting, there is another meeting on Tue, March 3rd at 7pm at Horace Mann.