Gifted Atlanta

“Gifted Program: Services are not aligned with funding intent.”

That’s the title of a report issued this month by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, and as the title suggests, a significant number of schools aren’t living up to the state’s intent in the way they provide gifted education.

Before I dig into the findings, let me say a few words about why the state conducted this audit, which first requires a brief overview of how Georgia funds its public schools.

The state of Georgia provides funding to its public schools based on the number of students who attend classes. In the funding terminology, one student attending for one full school day equals one “full-time equivalent,” or FTE. Schools receive state funds based on their total FTEs. The more FTEs a school has, the more money they have, which makes sense because larger schools need more teachers, more technology, and so forth.

Georgia’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) funding formula gives additional weight to certain types of students when calculating funding. These are students the state believes need specialized instruction, and among these higher-weighted groups are gifted identified students. The state gives schools extra money for providing gifted services to gifted students — according to the audit, 30 percent to 68 percent more than the baseline. That extra money is paid only for the hours that a gifted student is receiving gifted instruction, which typically means they’re being taught 1) in a smaller group setting; and 2) by a teacher who has earned “gifted endorsement” by completing additional training in teaching gifted students. The more hours of gifted instruction a school provides to its gifted population, the more extra funding it receives.

In short, the state shells out more money to provide specialized services for its gifted kids, and the audit sought to find out whether that money is being used the way the state intended.

The audit’s answer: not quite. The report identified three major shortcomings in how gifted education is being provided in Georgia schools:

1. Class sizes too large. Classes for gifted students are supposed to be smaller, to provide more individual attention to the students. The audit report refers to a class size of 12 students as the basis for funding for gifted instruction. This class size was considered the state’s ideal for gifted services. However, the audit found that gifted classes averaged 19 students in the primary grades, 23 in upper elementary, 26 in middle school and 22 in high school. Class sizes tended to be larger in larger school systems. All told, 77 percent of all gifted classes exceeded the class size of 12 that the state set as its standard.
   
   As an aside, the state board of education has established class size limits for gifted classes. At the elementary school level, a gifted class should have no more than 17 students; at the middle- and high-school levels, the maximum is 21. (See page 22 of the Georgia Resource Manual for Gifted Education Services.) The audit showed that these limits were also regularly exceeded.
   
   Unfortunately, as the report noted, the class-size standards aren’t enforceable, because the state has given its public schools broad flexibility in setting class sizes. As I understand it, this was an unavoidable compromise that was made because for many years the state did not fully fund schools in accordance with the QBE formulas, so the schools couldn’t afford to hire enough teachers to meet the class size requirements. The audit report acknowledges that schools aren’t violating the law by having such large classes, but it questions whether gifted classes are effectively meeting their purpose at those sizes.
   
2. Teaching requirements not met. As I outlined above, schools earn additional QBE funding when gifted-endorsed teachers provide instruction to gifted-identified students. The audit found that, out of all the classes schools claimed were gifted classes, 10 percent were taught by teachers who didn’t have gifted endorsement. (The audit also found that 2 percent of the students who schools claimed had received gifted instruction hadn’t been identified as gifted. That may be the result of clerical failings. In any case, it’s more a matter of concern on the funding side, whereas our focus on this website is on providing the students appropriate instruction.)
   
3. Lack of universal screening. Georgia doesn’t require that all students be screened for possible giftedness. It also doesn’t mandate that classroom teachers be trained to identify traits that may indicate giftedness. As a result, students from certain underrepresented groups may be overlooked. As the report points out, most school systems in Georgia do in fact engage in universal screening, even though the state doesn’t mandate it. The report had several recommendations for how school systems could improve the process of identifying gifted students.

Most of the recommendations in the report were for tighter controls, which would help to ensure that the delivery of gifted education in the schools is living up to what the state intended when it established a higher rate of funding for gifted instruction.

You can read a summary of the audit report here: https://www.audits2.ga.gov/reports/summaries/gifted-program/

The full report (PDF) includes a detailed overview of how gifted education works in Georgia, which is good reading for anyone who wants to advocate for a gifted child or for gifted education in general. You can download it here: https://www.audits.ga.gov/ReportSearch/download/29986

An article about the audit report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is here: https://www.ajc.com/education/audit-georgia-schools-took-money-for-gifted-services-they-didnt-provide/2T6NTODCHBFBHMG7KD7222ZOZU/