Gifted Atlanta

Dual enrollment is an important educational option for gifted students, especially those students whose home high schools don’t offer a wide variety of AP or advanced courses, or those who prefer the more serious environment of a college campus.

Students taking part in Georgia’s Dual Enrollment Program take classes at colleges or universities — public or private — at no cost, and earn both high-school credit and college credit for those classes.

HB 444, which passed the Georgia House of Representatives last week and is now in the Georgia Senate’s Higher Education Committee, would make two significant changes to dual enrollment:

1. Dual enrollment at four-year colleges, whether part of the University System of Georgia or private institutions, would be open only to high-school juniors and seniors. This is a change from existing policy, under which freshmen and sophomores also are eligible. (Under the bill, sophomores could still take classes at the state’s technical colleges.)
2. The Dual Enrollment Program would pay for a maximum of 30 semester hours (45 quarter hours) of college-level classes per high-school student. Once this cap of “covered” hours is reached, students could take additional dual enrollment classes by either A) paying out of pocket, or B) charging the additional dual enrollment hours against their future HOPE Grant or HOPE Scholarship.

To explain this second point, let’s say a high-school student has participated in dual enrollment since her junior year. By the time she reaches the spring semester of her senior year, she has taken 30 semester hours of classes at Georgia State University, all of which have been paid for by the Georgia Dual Enrollment Program. Now, she wants to take an additional 12 semester hours of classes at GSU. Under HB 444, she could either pay for those classes herself, or she could have them paid for by the Georgia Student Finance Commission (GSFC), in which case the 12 semester hours would be deducted from the maximum credit hours allowed to her under the HOPE program.

The caps on the HOPE Scholarship are a maximum of 127 semester hours or 190 quarter hours. This bill wouldn’t change those caps.

In our example above, the student taking an additional 12 semester hours at GSU could have those classes paid for by GSFC, applying them toward her HOPE allotment. If she goes on to receive a HOPE Scholarship, she would then have 115 semester hours remaining of HOPE Scholarship eligibility.

I contacted a legislative relations staff member with GSFC, who said it’s his interpretation that if a student exceeded the dual enrollment coverage limit, had additional dual enrollment classes paid for through GSFC, and didn’t end up receiving a HOPE Scholarship, they wouldn’t be required to reimburse the money to the state.

As with any legislation, changes to the bill are likely as it works its way through the legislative process.

My opinion? This is a good and necessary bill, crafted in response to an audit of the dual enrollment program that found explosive growth and spending, as well as some abuse of the program. Dual enrollment students taking one or two classes per semester at a college or university won’t bump into the 30-hour cap. Those who do reach the cap can still take additional classes without paying out of pocket by tapping into their future HOPE award.

The purpose of this bill is to keep the Dual Enrollment Program — and the HOPE program — solvent, and that’s crucial to Georgia’s gifted students.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the National Association for Gifted Children have joined forces with The High Flyer, a new blog about gifted education policy.

Policy papers are sometimes academic and dry, but I recommend you check this blog out anyway. Why? Because the more you know about what’s happening in gifted education in different states and school systems, the more effective you can be in bringing needed changes to your own school, district, or state, not only for your child, but for all gifted children.

Would you give ten minutes to support gifted education?

Here’s how: E-mail our U.S. senators in support of continued funding for the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.

Javits Act funding supports research into how gifted students learn, and how we can improve teaching methods.

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania) have written a letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education, asking that the 2016 budget continue to fund the Javits Act.

Showing support for Javits funding is crucial, because previous budgets have cut or eliminated it. Although Javits funding was as high as $11 million a year in the early 2000s, it dropped to $7.5 million per year later that decade, and was cut out entirely for the years 2010-2013. In 2014, Congress allocated $5 million to Javits, and in the 2015 budget, thanks to the leadership of Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, gifted research was funded at $10 million.

Don’t let Javits funding get slashed or eliminated again in the next budget.

Your letter to our senators can be short and simple. My suggestion:

1. Open with the call to action: to sign the Grassley-Casey letter in support of Javits funding.
2. State your connection to gifted education. For example, that you have a gifted child, or you teach gifted children.
3. Voice your support for research to ensure that gifted children are well served by our schools.
4. Restate the call to action.

Send an e-mail to U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson

Send an e-mail to U.S. Senator David Perdue

We need to take action on this by March 26, 2015.

Gifted kids are a minority. They need our advocacy.

Here’s a chance for your gifted student to have his or her voice heard, and to advocate for better gifted education in our schools:

[The following is a press release from the Georgia Department of Education]

Superintendent-elect Woods Seeks Student Advisers

MEDIA CONTACT: Matt Cardoza, GaDOE Communications Office, (404) 651-7358, mcardoza@gadoe.org or Meghan Frick, GaDOE Communications Office, (404) 656-5594, mfrick@doe.k12.ga.us

INTERESTED STUDENTS: Ron Culver: rculver@doe.k12.ga.us

Link to application

January 5, 2015 — State School Superintendent-elect Richard Woods is accepting applications for the 2015 Student Advisory Council.

The members of the Student Advisory Council meet three times during the school year with the State School Superintendent to discuss how decisions made at the state level are affecting students throughout Georgia. Members are advisers and act as liaisons between the Department of Education and the students of Georgia. Superintendent-elect Woods will be conducting the meetings, which will also feature various DOE personnel providing further information.

“Meeting with students and getting their advice will be a top priority of mine as State School Superintendent,” said Superintendent-elect Woods. “I am committed to making decisions that are in the best interests of our students, and hearing from them directly is how I can ensure that happens.”

All students in grades 7-12 are eligible to apply. Meetings will be held in February, March and early May (dates are subject to change). Applicants should be able to attend all meetings.

To be eligible for the Council, applications must be received by Friday, January 16, 2014.

Yesterday, I posted a request from Ty Tagami, a reporter at the AJC. He’s working on a story about gifted education in metro Atlanta schools.

He contacted me last night and asked to expand his request. He wants to hear from anyone who has an opinion about gifted education in metro Atlanta. He is most concerned with how parents feel their school’s gifted program stacks up against its general education program. In light of that, the ideal source for his story would be a parent who has at least one child participating in gifted classes, along with another child who is in the general education program at the same public school.

Also helpful would be parents whose children entered the gifted program relatively late in their school careers, or parents who have kids in the gifted program but are familiar with the general education program by their own in-school observation.

He would also be interested to talk with parents who left the public school system because they were unsatisfied with their child’s education, whether that was in the gifted program or the general program.

You can reach Ty at ttagami at ajc dot com (reconstruct the address to use it).

I received a call today from Ty Tagami, reporter at the AJC. He’s working on a story about the gifted population in metro Atlanta schools. He said he’s heard apocryphally about parents who pull their children out of the public schools prior to middle school if the child has not been admitted to their school district’s gifted program by then.

If this is something you’ve done or plan to do, or if you know someone who has, would you get in touch with Ty to help him out? You can reach him at ttagami at ajc dot com (reconstruct the address to use it).

I maintain this blog and web site to help make gifted children’s lives better. I can only guess you’re here because you care about that, too.

But who are these “gifted” kids? What does that label mean?

Some think a gifted child is one who has met the official requirements to enroll in special classes at school. Nothing more.

But being gifted means a lot more. It means a child’s brain works differently – it’s wired to absorb, master, and synthesize information more efficiently and effectively than an average person’s.

In an article worth reading (see link below), gifted advocate Suki Wessling says gifted children could more accurately be called “non-neurotypical.” In fact, Wessling argues we might be more successful winning support for our kids if we stopped calling them “gifted” – a word that implies advantage and elitism – and chose another term that would emphasize these children’s neurological differences.

By accentuating the neurological variation, perhaps we could convince educators and policy makers that gifted kids need a different educational approach. They learn differently, and must be taught differently. Gifted programs aren’t just a nice extra, but a necessity. More important, a suitable gifted education can’t consist solely of a couple of hours of enrichment each week. Gifted education has to extend to every classroom.

Whether they’re learning the alphabet or astrophysics, gifted children pick up new ideas with considerably less repetition than average kids. They not only take in new information quickly, but also are adept at integrating new knowledge with what they already know. They ask more questions, and yearn to explore with more depth, unsatisfied by the limited information in the textbook. No wonder they get bored and frustrated when they’re subjected to the slow pace of the general classroom, with constant review both during the school day and in the homework they are assigned.

Some schools try to address the needs of the gifted by grouping them in classes with high achievers. That provides a marginal improvement. But high-achieving students and gifted children are not the same, and their educational needs are not the same.

Put simply, a high achiever is a student who performs well in school, gets good grades, and scores well on standardized tests. Smart kids who work hard are your typical high achievers. Some high achievers are gifted, but not all. Likewise, not all gifted kids are high achievers. Some of them don’t adapt well to the structure of school, and therefore don’t attain academic success. Thomas Edison wouldn’t have been considered a high achiever in school, but I dare you to deny his giftedness.

The National Association for Gifted Children muddied these waters when it changed its definition of gifted individuals to “those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude or competence” [emphasis added]. That’s a disappointing move from our leading advocacy organization. To say that competence is the same as aptitude – that high achievement is the same as giftedness – is to measure the end point without looking at the path taken to get there. And it’s in the path that we see the distinction.

Imagine two middle-school boys, Henry and Gabe, who both play the piano. Henry, who dreams of attending Julliard, practices two hours a day with intense focus. Gabe is a prodigy who sight reads new pieces and practices just one hour a week, his practice sessions a mix of playing the assigned music and venturing off into his own spontaneous compositions. Both play beautifully. Go to their recital, and you might not be able to distinguish one from the other, but there’s no denying they learn differently.

This is not to say Gabe is a better musician, just that he learns and experiences music differently, in an atypical way. High achievers deserve great respect for their work habits, passion, and dedication, and certainly hard work can surpass raw talent. But the gifted child and the non-gifted high achiever do not have the same educational needs. Would you put Gabe and Henry in a piano class together? Of course not. Gabe would be stifled, or Henry would be overwhelmed, or both. Both these young pianists may be high achievers, but we can’t educate both with the same approach.

Likewise, we can’t adequately serve gifted children by lumping them in with high-achieving students. Advanced classes may teach material that’s ahead of the standard curriculum, but the demographics being what they are, the high achievers will tend to outnumber the gifted kids, even in an advanced class. So, these classes are often taught with the pacing, limited scope, and higher level of repetition meant for a non-gifted student. A high achiever class – or even a high achiever magnet program – does not necessarily meet a gifted learner’s needs.

In an ideal world, a gifted child would be afforded the same level of attention given to other “special needs” kids, with an individualized education program (IEP) and supplementary classroom resources. After all, some of our brightest learners are as far off the IQ bell curve as kids diagnosed as developmentally disabled – just in the opposite direction. Furthermore, giftedness doesn’t affect just intellect. It includes a whole slate of social and emotional characteristics that can affect the child’s overall well-being.

But ours is not an ideal world. It’s a world where plenty of people still think the whole concept of giftedness is a ploy by privileged snobs to get special benefits for their coddled kids. (See the comments written in response to a column I wrote in 2013 for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

This bias against giftedness makes it harder for all of us to get our kids’ needs met, but those who are hurt the most by these accusations of privilege, ironically, are the gifted kids who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. They are every bit as different from the norm as gifted kids from wealthier families, yet they have little or no access to the kind of enrichment opportunities listed on this website. They have only their local schools to meet their educational needs. That’s why it’s essential that we offer specialized gifted education in school.

The more we advocate for the gifted, the more we get others to understand that these children have legitimate neurological differences that create special learning needs, the more we stand up and insist that those needs be met, the greater our hope that all gifted kids – not just our own – will flourish.

They are our best chance for a better future. These kids, these different thinkers with their atypical brains, are the ones who will solve the world’s big problems.

We need them. And they need us.

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For further reading:

“Divorcing the G-Word: A Parent’s Suggestion for Defining Giftedness,” by Suki Wessling, published in the summer 2013 issue of Gifted Education Press Quarterly (Wessling’s article is on page four)

“The bright child vs. the gifted learner: What’s the difference?” from the Gifted-Ed Guru blog of Psychology Today magazine

“High Achievers and Gifted Learners: Can They Mix?” (PDF), by Rosemary Cathcart, published by the George Parkyn National Centre for Gifted Education