Column: Retired superintendent discusses programs for exceptional students
Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost.
– In 1961 California passed the Mentally Gifted Minors Act (MGM) which encouraged special advanced programs be made available to all students scoring at or above the 98th percentile on an IQ test. MGM was a well-intentioned effort to make sure kids with exceptional academic ability were being challenged in our schools.
It came at the height of the Cold War with the Russians having beaten us to space with Sputnik. Critics thought our schools were inadequately preparing our students, particularly in math and science. Sound familiar?
I lived at the time in La Jolla in a very privileged home that included my mother who was an English teacher, and my grandmother, a retired reading teacher who cared for me daily while my mother taught school. Suffice it to say I knew how to read before I ever went to school.
When tested for the MGM program, I was skipped ahead in school and from then on was two years younger than my classmates all through school. (As an aside, I never in my 43-year career recommended skipping grades). By 1980 454 California districts had MGM programs serving some 160,000 kids, but there were many critics.
I went to graduate school and became a teacher at about that time and was a bit surprised the MGM program had become controversial. To be sure, the IQ test itself was without question culturally and linguistically biased. It also looked only at the ability to do well on an IQ test, which did identify certainly some exceptionally gifted kids. It also certainly missed many gifted kids unlike me, who weren’t from a privileged home led by two highly educated women. Not surprisingly, kids of color and from lower socioeconomic schools were not as represented in MGM as white kids from La Jolla.
On the flip side, some students were tested and admitted to MGM who likely would never have been identified and challenged in school if not for MGM. Many of the programs were exceptional and really motivated me. Being two years younger than my peers made athletic competition challenging for me until later in high school, but I thrived as a star member of the school’s Knowledge Bowl team. My MGM pals and I were allowed to represent our school and be a part of a team. It was special and would not have been there without MGM, but the program was due for reform and expansion.
In 1980 MGM was replaced in California by the Gifted and Talented Education Act known as GATE. GATE expanded the criteria for participation to include Academics, Leadership, Visual and Performing Arts, and Creativity. At the same time, the debate rightfully raged over whether exceptional kids should be tracked in classes together. Some schools had as many as five tracks based on student scores. This was definitely a bad idea.
In place of ability grouping, which was known commonly as tracking or homogeneous grouping, cooperative groups to include kids of varying skill levels or expertise were encouraged in heterogeneous classes. The obvious compromise was to ability group in core academic classes but not in electives.
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, published in 1983, also gained widespread acceptance among educators. It suggested, without any objective evidence or defensible research, that students were gifted in many different ways and hence could exhibit mastery of the curriculum and advanced ability in a variety of ways other than traditional academic exams. These other “intelligences” included :
- Verbal/Linguistic
- Logical/Mathematical
- Physical/Kinesthetic
- Musical
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- Naturalist, and
- Existential Intelligences
Despite the lack of adequate research to support these theories, they were somewhat common-sensical, very popular for obvious reasons, and widely accepted. My father was a great example as he was gifted kinesthetically and could fix most anything, but Shakespeare had no appeal for him.
Gardner’s book resulted in financial success for him and widespread adaptation of the curriculum to address multiple means of learning. Soon it became common to encourage students to show their mastery of the curriculum not just through written assignments and traditional tests. Students were often given options, for example, to complete a collage, make a model, or present a dramatic rendition instead of writing a traditional essay.
Not surprisingly, some of these new methods of showing mastery of the curriculum had been part of the MGM projects that had been in practice. The difference was, at least in my experience, that these alternative methods had been in addition to not instead of traditional tests and essays.
Although very popular, there was no evidence of which I am aware that they resulted in improved student performance at least by traditional means of assessment. The best teachers allowed occasionally for alternative ways for kids to show they had learned the material and work in groups but still maintained high standards and expectations as evidenced by traditional exams and essays.
At about the same time, the humanistic self-esteem movement became wildly popular, especially in California. It posited every child was special with individual strengths and weaknesses and no child was without relatively the same capabilities as another, just expressed in different forms. Criticism of kids’ performance or effort was discouraged. Failure was to be ended. All kids were to be successful just in different ways perhaps yet to be discovered. Student essays were not to be covered in red ink corrections and rewritten. Encouraging compliments were to be made by teachers on all student work. Spelling was minimized. As a former English teacher, I will admit this made grading papers much easier and less time-consuming.
Avoiding practices damaging to student self-esteem had first been a problem for me as a principal with the ugly “Freshman slave” fundraiser I mentioned in a previous column. I next recall an issue with cheerleader tryouts. Many schools decided any student who wanted to be a cheerleader should be allowed to do so.
Kids without a traditional cheerleader physique were not to be body shamed and excluded and this was right to do. I recall a situation where the cheerleader squad was to include a maximum of twelve students. Several more fully qualified students than that number tried out and it was really close as to who would be selected. Popularity definitely entered the selection process although there were objective criteria to be followed. The obvious solution of allowing a few more students to be cheerleaders was not permitted by the student body constitution.
Some schools addressed this kind of situation by placing no limits on cheerleader squads. I recall being at a conference where a principal proudly showed a video of a football game where something like 48 kids were cheerleaders. It was hard to see the athletic field because there were so many cheerleaders. Similarly, there were no cuts from many other previously selective groups.
I thought that was absurd. I’ve learned one thing about fads in education. Way too many educators believe if a little bit of some new idea is worthy of implementation even more is always even better. The unfortunate outcome, however, in many cases was that standards were lowered, and the feeling of accomplishment for succeeding diminished. In our case, the compromise reached was to set objective criteria, and all who passed that mark, regardless of how many, were accepted. If the number were too high preference was given to students in higher grades.
Unfortunately, there were way too many instances, however, of ridiculous practices. For example, in awards assemblies, some argued every single student should get an award or none at all. This resulted in situations like I experienced in one district where a new teacher gave a student an award for improvement he was unable to accept as she had suspended him from class that day, like many other days. His parents came to school for an award only to find he had again been suspended.
Kids were confused by the obvious absurdity of it and all knew in their hearts many awards were undeserved. Some bright kids questioned why they should try to do their best if “ok” got the same recognition as excellent.
Critics also questioned and often still do any advanced opportunity where all student groups are not proportionately represented. Despite obvious alternative explanations for the discrepancies in representation, it is often suggested it is due to some form of unfair discrimination. Wherever this is still true it must obviously be combatted and any discriminatory practices eliminated.
The simple truth though is that some kids have more ability academically than others. It might be due to genetics; such as someone over six feet tall usually having a better chance to make the basketball team than a shorter athlete. Academically it may be due to innate ability or simply that they were fortunate enough to be raised by a grandmother who taught them to read before they ever went to school while many other kids live in homes where English is not spoken let alone taught.
Despite its many imperfections, not challenging exceptional students is a grave error in our schools and a primary catalyst for the many new charter schools.
Critics argue that “gifted” kids already are at a distinct advantage and hence don’t need more support; that selection criteria is inherently biased against kids from different backgrounds; that there is no evidence they do any good for gifted kids; that kids selected can become aloof; and that if successful they serve only to exacerbate the achievement gap between kids of privilege and other groups. That last point is really disturbing as it suggests diminishing the achievement of top students if it promotes equality should be embraced.
In answer, I repeat a stat I’ve mentioned before. In the rapidly developing countries of particularly Asia, there are about 100 million kids in advanced high school programs in English taking a far more rigorous course of study than many of our public schools offer. I’m all for equality of opportunity but would like all to consider that equality of opportunity for academically advanced kids means programs that will challenge them.
In 2014 California adopted the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) which requires each district to develop a local plan to guide its spending. It is called the Local Control Accountability Program (LCAP) which parents and staff write and approve at each site. In Paso it includes programs for the gifted. If you have an exceptional child, please join your school’s Site Council to assure it is maximizing student academic achievement as the school’s highest priority.
– Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost
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