Education Week - May 20, 2015 - 18

UNMET PROMISES High-Achieving, Low-Income Students
Academic Stars Often Overlooked
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16
broaden their range, said Susan G.
Assouline, the director of the BelinBlank
Center for Gifted Education
and Talent Development at the University
of Iowa in Iowa City.
Ms. Assouline argued that if
testing can overlook impoverished
gifted students, it can be better to
put the cart before the horse: Provide
initial enrichment, such as
during the summer or after school,
and observe how quickly students
learn and respond.
"Start not with, 'Who qualifies for
the program?' but with, 'What is
your end goal?' " she said.
The Belin-Blank center has
started a program to build a middle
school pipeline for high school
Advanced Placement courses in
11 rural, high-poverty districts in
Iowa. The program uses a more relaxed
entry requirement-scoring
in the top 15 percent on a locally
normed test-before students take
two hours each of math and science
after school weekly, for a total of
96 hours. In its intense focus, the
program provides both a screening
and a support structure to prepare
students to take ap courses in the
upper grades.
Best Practices?
It's not that there's no evidence of
what works to teach gifted students
generally. It's that, across decades
of research, low-income gifted students
barely have a footprint in
the studies, casting doubt on how
certain educators can be that those
strategies will apply to them.
For example, in a new longitudinal
study in the 2015 book, A Nation
Empowered: Evidence Trumps
the Excuses Holding Back America's
Brightest Students, researcher
Katie Larsen McClarty of the Center
for College & Career Success in
Austin, Texas, part of the education
publisher Pearson's research
network, found that, on average,
students who skipped a grade
and participated in challenging
academic coursework, such as ap,
"consistently and significantly outperformed
their nonaccelerated
peers, both in high school and in
college."
However, only 11 percent of the
advanced students in the study
sample were from the lowest 25
percent of family income, and 70
percent were from the top half of
income. Moreover, in a separate research
analysis also conducted this
year and published in the same
book, Mr. Plucker found no studies
on various methods of acceleration
that included a large enough sample
of low-income students to be
sure the methods worked for them
and did not cause negative side
effects.
"The fact we could find next to
nothing on low-income students
for any of the different acceleration
methods was just shocking," Mr.
Plucker said.
Take, for example, some of the
behaviors associated with gifted
students in a class that is not academically
challenging: They may
zone out or be focused on their own
interests instead of a lesson. They
may be more likely to disagree with
the teacher and have difficulty socializing
with other children.
In a high-poverty, likely crowded
school with many other students
struggling to meet standards, that
behavior might come across as antisocial
rather than bored.
"They are flipped sides of the same
misconception: that there's no talent
in these kids," Mr. Plucker said.
Chyenne Roberts, a 6th grader
at the Paterson academy, said she
often tried not to act smart in her
old school, because she was bullied
and called names for being
different. "I would feel stupid, even
though the test didn't show that;
I was the outsider, because it was
just harder to be down in [my class"
My
concern is so
many of these kids
in low-income
settings in 3rd grade
ought to be reading
at a 6th grade level."
JONATHAN A. PLUCKER
University of Connecticut
mates'] level," she recalled. "You
start to think, 'Is this how my family
sees me? Is that how my parents
see me?' "
It took a combination of challenging
coursework, training in organizational
and study skills, and
burgeoning friendships with other
accelerated students for Chyenne
to become an outgoing, focused student
at the gifted magnet school.
"I saw I had to push myself, and ...
my confidence level just rises a lot
here."
Moving Forward
Although much of the focus
under the federal No Child Left
Behind law has been on moving
low-achieving students to gradelevel
proficiency, there has been
a significant-but small and mostly
overlooked-rise in low-income
students achieving at advanced
levels.
From 2003 to 2013, the share
of students eligible for free lunch
who scored at the "advanced" level
in mathematics on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress
rose from 1 percent to 2 percent
in both 4th and 8th grades.
Among students eligible for reduced-price
lunch, the proportion
performing at the advanced level
in math rose from 2 percent to 5
percent among 4th graders and
from 3 percent to 5 percent for 8th
grade. Moreover, 5 percent of 4th
graders receiving reduced-price
18 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 20, 2015 | www.edweek.org
lunch scored at the advanced level
on the 2013 naep in reading, up a
small but statistically significant
1 percent from 2003.
As a district superintendent, José
M. Torres said he was reluctant to
send his top students to gifted programs
like the Illinois Mathematics
and Science Academy in Aurora,
a state residential school for 650
high-achieving 10th-12th graders,
because "while realistically, two
or three students weren't going to
change my accountability scores,
but perceptually, I didn't want to
see my best go."
Now, as president of that same
state math and science academy,
he is working to bring in more
students from disadvantaged
groups, including rural and minority
students, but he still struggles
to attract an economically diverse
population. Only 13 percent of his
students qualify for free or reducedprice
meals, compared with about
40 percent statewide.
If Mr. Torres is successful, it's
also easy to fall into a Catch-22, Mr.
Plucker said. "Principals go, they
get a little success [in a gifted program
targeting poor students], and
parents find out about it-and you
know which parents are the ones
who were looking-and you come
back in a few years and say, 'Well,
shoot, we're so far off where we
wanted to be.' "
Coverage of the experiences of low-income,
high-achieving students is supported in
part by a grant from the Jack Kent Cooke
Foundation, at www.jkcf.org. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over the
content of this coverage.
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link to
"Unlocking Emergent Talent:
Supporting High Achievement
of Low-Income, High Ability Students."
www.edweek.org/links
Wide Array of Students
Go to N.J. Gifted School
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16
teacher recommendations and those who score in the top 10
percent on the standardized Cognitive Ability Test in language,
mathematics, or nonverbal skills such as understanding puzzles,
patterns, and unusual solutions to problems, according
to Rita Routé, the district's supervisor of gifted and talented
education. Test scores alone aren't necessarily a good predictor
of how students will do at the academy, Ms. Routé said. "We've
had some students who came in that first year, and they didn't
have the best tests, but they had a lot of motivation and they
persevered; and then we have students who scored at the 99th
percentile ...and they are struggling," she continued.
Several teachers noted that many students had a bit of a
culture shock when they arrived. Nicole Slota, who teaches a
grades 2-3 combined classroom, said the school tries to teach
study skills and perseverance as it ramps up rigor.
"It was frightening for me at first," said Chyenne Roberts, a
6th grader. "At my old school, I was always the first one finished.
[Here,] the work was challenging; you had to really sit
and think about it."
Ms. Bruins said Chyenne initially talked a lot and had to be
told to focus frequently, but as she becomes more confident, "she
is just blossoming; she goes above and beyond not just in science
and language arts, but in her community service." She reads
and gives short science lessons to kindergartners at PS 28.
The academy has benefited from support from Paterson Superintendent
Donnie W. Evans and Principal Nancy Castro,
but it's not always been an easy sell to parents. The hulking
five-story PS 28 sits across from low-income housing in a highpoverty
neighborhood along the Passaic River. "Some parents
were not happy about that," Ms. Routé said.
Since the school started, the number of high-potential students
in Paterson has grown significantly, from 125 in grades
4-8 in 2012 to 200 in grades 2-8 this year, and 250 expected
in 2015-16. In 2012, 3 percent of students performed at the
advanced level in language arts on state tests, and 80 percent
did so in math. By 2014, more than 14 percent were advanced
in language arts and 85 percent in math. The school plans to
become certified to provide pre-International Baccalaurate programs
for the middle school and expand to lower grades.
As the academy's success and popularity grow, it remains to
be seen how long its focus will stay on economically disadvantaged
students. From 2012-13 to 2013-14, the percentage of lowincome
students at PS 28 dropped from 94 percent-just above
the district's 92 percent poverty rate-to 84 percent.
Coverage of the experiences of low-income, high-achieving students is
supported in part by a grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation,
at www.jkcf.org. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the
content of this coverage.
NAEP GRADE FOUR MATHEMATICS
The share of low-income 4th graders scoring as "advanced" on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress in math has grown,
but not enough to catch up with higher-income students.
12
10
8
6
4
2
n No Assistance
n Lunch Assistance
11.4
9.8
8.7
7.9
6.1
3.8
0.3
2000
0.8
2003
1.3
2005
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics
1.5
2007
1.5
2009
1.8
2011
2
13
2013
Percent Scoring Advanced
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Education Week - May 20, 2015

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