Education Week - January 15, 2020 - 9

Baltimore Tests an Effort to Diversify a Gifted Program
Third grader David Edwards, who is

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enrolled in the Baltimore Emerging

tiatives at the Center for Talented
Youth, a gifted education program
for school-age children around the
globe.
"That dialogue has changed and
people are recognizing that there's
academic talent and that it comes
in different shapes and sizes," said
Flynn, a former Baltimore high
school math teacher. "It may not look
the way that they're used to."
Effective talent-development programs train teachers to work as talent scouts, spotting children who
may not have the motivation or support they need to excel academically
in traditional classrooms, said Del
Siegle, the director of the National
Center for Research on Gifted Education at the University of Connecticut.
But more often than not, teachers
instead serve as deficit detectives,
weeding out the students they assume won't be a good fit because they
have less-than-stellar achievement
test scores, don't pay attention in
class, or are English-language learners, Siegle said.
"You need someone who can say,
'Look at the interesting questions this
kid asks, there's something going on
in that brain up there,'" he said. "It's
really hard to pick potential. Without
giving kids opportunities, the talent
won't surface."

Scholars Program at Gwynns Falls
Elementary School, is an average
student by traditional measures,
says his teacher, but craves a
challenge. Below, he cuts out words
for a class project.

Photos by Steve Ruark for Education Week

To bring the demographics of
identified students closer in line
to the overall makeup of their
districts, educators must do four
things, Ford said: address educator
bias that leads to the underreferal
of black, Latino, and low-income
students; review screening procedures to ensure all students are
evaluated; use qualifying tests that
are less linguistically and economically biased; and, most importantly,
improve outreach to families from
underrepresented groups.
"We can educate and enlighten
them about ... how their children
could and should qualify [for programs]," Ford said.

'She Wants Us to Be Smart'
The science, technology, engineering, and math-based classes in the
Emerging Scholars program are interdisciplinary, weaving in lessons
on reading, writing, and social studies, but the instructors have latitude
in how they teach.
Schools determine whether the
25-week-long classes-all taught by
Baltimore city schools teachers-are
held before or after school, or as pullout classes during the day.
At Moravia Park Elementar y
on Baltimore's east side, Jeannine Disviscour selected Awaicha
(pronounced o-ay-shah) Tafah,
the French-speaking son of Cameroonian immigrants, because his
classroom teacher marveled at how
quickly he processed information,
especially in math.
A 2018 study from Siegle's national
center found that few school districts
offer programs to identify and recruit
potentially gifted students who don't
perform well on traditional measures.
Some of the students at Moravia Park
have failed math, struggled with phonics, or been labeled as "problem kids"
because they do not focus in class.
Despite their struggles, Disviscour
or another teacher saw something in
them.
On a recent morning, Disviscour
kneeled on the carpet in her architecture class to console a teary-eyed
7-year-old struggling to spell "parallel." At the same time, she encouraged Awaicha to lead his classmates
on a scavenger hunt for shapes.

You need
someone who
can say, 'Look at
the interesting
questions this
kid asks, there's
something going
on in that brain
up there.' "
DEL SIEGLE
Director
National Center on Gifted
Education

The constant movement and inquiry are by design. Disviscour aims
to keep the children engaged and
asking questions, challenging the
teacher and classmates.
"She gets to teach us that she wants
us to be smart," 2nd grader Aubrey
Chestnut said.

Racial Imbalance
The Center for Talented Youth
sought out the partnership with the
city schools because certain students-mainly black and low-income-had largely been shut out of
its programs, which benefit academically talented students in all 50 states
and more than 90 countries.
Leaders there decided the key to
finding a more diverse pool of students was not testing more children
or lowering the bar for participation;
it was finding another way to identify them.
"Our focus is on those kids who
have the strength in academics that
we just have to try and uncover," said
Amy Shelton, the center's interim executive director. "How do we really
serve these kids in Baltimore city in a
way that pushes as many as possible to
reach the highest level of potential?"
At the end of each Emerging Scholars session, instructors write evalu-

ations for each student that gauge
whether they are ready for traditional
CTY programming. Seventy percent of
Baltimore Emerging Scholars students
are deemed Center for Talented Youthready. This compares to only 3 percent
of Baltimore schools students qualifying through above-grade-level testing.
The bar for participation is high.
Johns Hopkins uses above-gradelevel tests, such as the SAT and the
School and College Ability Test, that
measure math and verbal reasoning
abilities.
In the Emerging Scholars program,
each school also sets its own selection
process for the program, with most
relying on staff recommendations or
teachers' intuition.
But data show similar scores on
some cognitive measures, such as
those for processing speed and spatial skills, for students who complete
the Emerging Scholars program with
high evaluations and those who come
to CTY by more traditional paths.
Johns Hopkins and Baltimore are
not alone. School districts across the
country have struggled to address the
racial imbalance of their gifted learning programs.
In New York, 70 percent of students
are black or Hispanic; yet white and
Asian students represent more than
70 percent of students in the city's
gifted programs.
The disparities in the Baltimore
schools aren't as stark but still exist.
While nearly 80 percent of the
school system's students are black,
black students represent slightly less
than half of the students classified
as gifted. District data for the 201920 school year indicates 57 percent
of students classified as gifted are
black.
"These programs have tried to be
more equitable," said Donna Ford, a
distinguished professor at Ohio State
University's College of Education and
Human Ecology. "They're not there
yet. They are by no means there yet."

'Let's Feed Them'
The Center for Talented Youth
staff train the program instructors,
warning them to expect pushback
and frustration when students
struggle with the above-grade-level
material.
"Students will be pushed in ways
that they have not been pushed in
the past," Flynn told teachers during a training earlier this year.
At another Baltimore school,
Gwynns Falls Elementary, on a fall
afternoon, Eastman guided students through a lesson on engineering design: developing a step-bystep guide to making a sandwich.
David Edwards and Tayler Logan
sat at a table, working through the
task. The 8-year-olds alternated
between eureka moments and eye
rolls.
With the Emerging Scholars
curriculum, "the kids can actually grapple with the material and
don't have to worry about time constraints," Eastman said.
Eastman said she also taught
David, a methodical thinker, and
Tayler, who's quick on her feet, in
the Emerging Scholars summer
program. The two are, by traditional measures, average students
in the classroom, she said, but they
crave challenge.
The typical Emerging Scholar is
"a kid who has not been challenged,
has not been valued enough prior to
this," said Dennis Jutras, the coordinator of gifted and advanced
learning for the Baltimore schools.
"In many ways, in many cases, this
is the first time this student is being
seen, given a voice and is being allowed to flourish."
Coverage of after-school learning
opportunities is supported in part by a
grant from the Charles Stewart Mott
Foundation. Education Week retains
sole editorial control over the content
of this coverage.

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Education Week - January 15, 2020

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