The Lodi Unified school district (CA) is unhappy that membership in the gifted-student program Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) is down, and doesn't seem to reflect the ethnic diversity of the local population. So, of course, they've suggested tinkering with the admission formulas:
Trustees recently approved changing the requirements of the Gifted and Talented Education program to allow more opportunity for minority students to join its ranks.Students are now eligible to receive extra points on top of their standardized test scores for limiting factors present in their lives. So, for example, a child who has a learning disability, is an English language learner or comes from an impoverished or culturally diverse background will receive special consideration.
"We've been seeing lately our (GATE) enrollment is down," Lodi Unified Superintendent Bill Huyett said Monday. "That's an indicator that it needs to be opened up a little"...
Despite past attempts to diversify its gifted programs, the district found GATE enrollment did not reflect the makeup of the district.
Imagine that. Schools tend to find that academic grades, test scores, and other measures of academic achievement are not randomly dispersed among ethnic group members. Seen in that light, the fact that GATE participation doesn't mirror the "diversity" of the district is a validation of the GATE admissions criteria. Unfortunately, "diversity" trumps all, so these educators would like to muddy the waters by including some very fuzzy criteria.
Who's going to define what a learning disability is? What criteria will be used? How severe does the disability need to be? Why would the district expect that a student with any sort of learning disability would be able to handle the GATE curriculum? How long can a student be living in the US and still be considered an English language learner? How are we defining an impoverished background? And why would any of these factors, which could be considered a disability, be lumped in together with being from a "culturally diverse" background, which is not? Does this mean Asian and Indian children who are already off the top of the testing charts will be even more likely to be accepted? Or will some cultures be considered more diverse than others?
I agree that the codes are in conflict; it's ridiculous to define a program as being for kids who are on the top end of the intelligence scale and then also demand that the kids in that group be diverse in any sort of multicultural way. They will be who they are, and if the district is truly unhappy to find out that any particular group seems underrepresented, the solution is to investigate why that might be, not to fudge the numbers afterward with some ill-defined and highly-unreliable admission criteria.
What really frosts my shorts about this whole scenario is that the programs are for the benefit of the students enrolled in them. Therefore, the adults involved should be committed to developing admission criteria that guarantee, as much as possible, that any particular student is ready for more challenges, will benefit by more challenges, and will complete the program with the increased self-esteem that comes from tackling, and overcoming, tough educational programs. The current criteria address this by requiring that students perform above a certain percentile on the Raven Progressive Matrices or the CAT-6 exam.
Instead, the adults involved are dithering over the fact that the "diversity" is not what it should be, and have suggested criteria that may in fact be negatively related to the ability of any particular student to do this work or to benefit from it. Does that sound like a plan that's in the students' best interests to you?
The California Association for the Gifted, or CAG defines gifted students as:
...a child enrolled in a public elementary or secondary school of this state who is identified as possessing demonstrated or potential abilities that give evidence of high performance capability...
"Abilities that give evidence of high performance capability." Period. There is no research supporting the notion that overcoming learning disabilities, or learning English late in life, or coming from an impoverished background, are positively related to high academic ability. Therefore, lowering the academic standards for these students makes no sense. If a child shows that he or she is capable of doing the work, these factors should not be used to exclude them. I see no reason why they should be used to include them, either.
Posted by kswygert at September 13, 2005 04:59 PM