Education Week - May 20, 2015 - 16

UNMET PROMISES High-Achieving, Low-Income Students
Among Top Achievers, Income-Based Gaps Start Early
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
programs, and only 13 require a
growth model or other indicator
capable of measuring the academic
progress of gifted students.
Only two states require teachers
to have any training in educating
gifted students, and none requires
educators to learn about how poverty
may affect giftedness.
"In no way am I saying closing
achievement gaps isn't important;
3rd grade students should be able
to read at a 3rd grade level," said
Jonathan A. Plucker, an education
professor specializing in gifted and
special education issues at the University
of Connecticut in Storrs.
"My concern is so many of these
kids in low-income settings in 3rd
grade ought to be reading at a 6th
grade level. So much of our policy,
interventions, education system
treat proficiency as the end zone,
when it ought to be a yard marker."
Going Beyond Tests
This month, at the Paterson Academy
for the Gifted and Talented here
in New Jersey, 6th grader Elainie
Alfonso graphs pre-algebra problems
in math, her favorite class, and said
she finally has friends "whose brains
work like mine."
But without good recommendations
from her old school and the
then-newly-launched academy
looking to recruit, Elainie's teachers
admit she likely would have
been overlooked.
"Most traditional measures of
giftedness are designed to work
with kids who are already doing
well, performing well on achievement
tests," said Ms. OlszewskiKubilius.
But
it's clear that school-readiness
gaps-based in part on health
and home-enrichment differences
for children in poverty-open in
the toddler stage and tend to widen
throughout the early grades. As a
result, she said, by using nationally
normed standardized intelligence
tests, "you aren't going to find children
who have potential but aren't
necessarily achieving well."
Poverty can challenge identification
of a gifted youngster regardless
of whether he or she attends a
wealthy or impoverished school.
In a school filled with other students
living in poverty, teachers
and administrators may not have
time or financial resources for advanced
enrichment when other students
need help to meet basic standards.
Meanwhile, a poor, bright
student in a wealthier school with
the resources to support advanced
courses and enrichment for gifted
students may still find him- or herself
outcompeted for a program slot
by students who had more home
support.
"The mistake we've made in
gifted education is, we've turned
identification into a pure testing
issue," Mr. Plucker said, but stereotypes
persist that the focus for
children in poverty should be just
on getting them to minimal standards,
not looking for outstanding
performers. "It's more of a cultural,
unintended bias issue, but in education,
we haven't admitted that
that's the real problem-probably
because it makes people uncomfortable
to think that everyone's a little
bit racist, everyone's a little bit classist."
For
example, Ms. Olszewski-Kubilius
said, teachers should consider
recommending a child who
speaks nonstandard English but
uses creative puns and other wordplay.
Likewise, a student who seems
disengaged but who can ask probing
questions or shows deep understanding
of a subject that interests
him or her might be considered for
a program even if the child's grades
are generally mediocre.
If they must use standardized
tests, administrators trying to find
potentially advanced students in
poverty often need to substantially
PAGE 18 >
Elainie Alfonso, a 4th grader at the Paterson Academy for the Gifted and Talented, in Paterson, N.J.,
said she's glad to finally have friends "whose brains work like mine."
At N.J. Gifted Academy,
Most Are Poor, Minority
Diversity said to enhance lessons
By Sarah D. Sparks
Paterson, N.J.
Diversity in gifted education is often pitched as a matter of
equity, of benefit for the poor and minority students entering a
mostly wealthy and white advanced program.
While true, that focus omits much about how fresh perspectives
can deepen learning for all students, argue teachers at the
Paterson Academy for the Gifted and Talented here.
The 200-student magnet program for grades 2-8, housed
within Public School 28, enrolls more than 80 percent low-income
students, all of them accelerated a grade level or more in
math, language arts, or science. Unlike many districtwide gifted
magnet programs, the academy's enrollment mirrors the district:
roughly 60 percent Hispanic, 20 percent black, 5 percent white,
and the rest students from Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern
backgrounds. The halls are lined with science-fair projects from
students, while the walls show off graphed algebra equations
and research projects on the origins of idioms.
Maureen Bruins, a grades 5-6 science teacher and a former
state teacher of the year, said the project-based format allows
for easier differentiation in classes where some students are
accelerated a year or two and others work three or four years
above their grade.
Ms. Bruins said in schools where she has previously taught it
was hard to support advanced students. "There were always one
or two who were accelerated, and they did a lot of work on their
own. I was working hard to differentiate at all levels, but there's
no extra support," she said.
The cultural, linguistic, and economic diversity allows for
The Riverview Towers, a low-income housing complex,
looms over Public School 28, which houses the gifted-andtalented
academy. The school is located in one of
Paterson's most impoverished neighborhoods.
Sixth grader Chyenne Roberts takes
a break from gym class at the giftedand-talented
school.
GALLERY:
Visit the Full Frame photo blog to see more images by photographer Mark
Abramson from the gifted-and-talented program at PS 28 in Paterson, N.J.,
as well as the neighborhood around the school. fullframe.edweek.org
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 20, 2015 | www.edweek.org
richer explorations of the curriculum, according to 6th grade
humanities teacher Tai D. Matthews.
"We have some conversations that would just knock your socks
off," Ms. Matthews said. "In one group of six, you'll have four or
five different perspectives, because this one is Syrian, this one
from Bangladesh, this one from across the street [in the publichousing
tower], so you have all these cultural influences."
Last year, a Syrian student left to visit relatives, returning
while cnn was buzzing with news of the civil war there. "The
perspectives that she was able to bring, where do you get that?
You get that in Paterson, because we have that diversity," Ms.
Matthews said.
The district tries to identify 1st graders with potential through
PAGE 18 >
Photos by Mark Abramson for Education Week

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Education Week - May 20, 2015

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