"Highly capable" students will lose advanced learning opportunities in Seattle Public Schools. To address "historical inequity," all students will be placed in the same classrooms at neighborhood schools. Teachers will differentiate instruction to meet each students' needs, claims the district.
Most "highly capable" students are white or Asian American.
Schools should identify more children from underrepresented groups who'd benefit from the challenge instead of cutting gifted classes, said Simrin Parmar, a mother at Cascadia Elementary.
"If they do this, it will be the bell curve getting ignored and watering down the teaching," parent Eric Feeny said.
Kelly Riffell, also a Cascadia parent, complained about the move on social media: Seattle Public Schools replacing "highly capable" programming "with empty promises, zero plan, and zero funding," she write. "I’m sad to watch so many families leave the public school system, but I can’t blame them."
Advanced education isn't about privileging the already advantaged, argue Fordham's Amber N. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli in a forward to a new report on advanced learning. It's about "identifying and maximizing the strengths and potential of every student—including poor kids and kids of color with potential for high academic achievement."
In other words, teach more to more students.
Broken Pipeline, by Adam Tyner, Fordham's national research director, finds that most districts now screen all students for their academic potential, but most compare them to national norms. Using local norms, such as looking at those in the top 10 percent of their class, helps identify more promising students at high-poverty schools.
It doesn't help to label students as "gifted" if they don't get the opportunity to accelerate their learning.
Nearly half of schools offer part-time pull-out classes for high achievers, where they can tackle more challenging work with their intellectual peers.
But a similar percentage offer “in-class differentiation in general classrooms with no clustering of gifted students.” That doesn't amount to much.
The most effective programs -- special classes for advanced learners and full-time schools for gifted students — are rare (6 percent and 1 percent, respectively).
As a result, "advanced programming in most elementary and middle schools is limited and of questionable value."
Most high schools offer advanced courses, but students who weren't challenged in elementary and middle school may be unprepared.