Boosting Minorities In Gifted Programs Poses Dilemmas; Nontraditional Criteria Lift Admissions of Blacks, Poor; Fear of Diluting Programs; New Focus on the Very Top
Daniel Golden. Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.:  Apr 7, 2004.  pg. A.1

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Under South Carolina's old rules, TiShanna Smith wouldn't be considered gifted. Under its new rules, she is.

Every Tuesday, the fifth-grader at Greenview Elementary attends a three-hour advanced class in which she studies algebra and researches topics such as the history of hot-air balloons. "The 'challenge' class helps me get ahead," says 11-year-old TiShanna, an African-American from a single-parent family, who was identified as gifted by a special test intended to boost minorities. "When my older brother comes home, I help him with his homework."

Around the country and especially in the South, new tests are propelling more minority students into predominantly white gifted- education programs. Proponents applaud what they say is an overdue easing of racial disparities in gifted education, stressing that the special classes can open greater opportunities for blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans.

But it's not that simple. By changing the standards for gifted education, traditionalists say, school districts seeking classroom equity are undermining academic excellence. Some minority students identified as gifted are actually struggling in regular classes, raising questions about whether the new criteria accurately gauge academic ability. And some school-board members, teachers and parents complain that the admission of more students, both white and minority, has watered down the quality of gifted programs. In response, a number of school districts, including Greenville County, have created super- gifted programs that are almost entirely white.

"If too large a percentage of your students are placed in a gifted category, you're not dealing with the best and the brightest," says Tommie Reece, chairwoman of the Greenville County school board. "You're diluting the program."

Gifted programs emerged nationwide in the 1970s to give talented elementary-school students extra challenges. In some areas, the programs were promoted by white parents trying to circumvent court- ordered racial desegregation. Districts typically identified students as gifted who scored in the top 5% -- 130 or above -- on traditional intelligence tests measuring verbal and math skills. Whites tend to outscore minorities on these tests, which made gifted programs overwhelmingly white.

Gifted students typically are excused from regular classes for part or all of the day for accelerated instruction, sometimes including museum trips and other enrichment activities. They often have a leg up on entry into honors and advanced-placement tracks in middle and high school.

In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration began pushing to desegregate gifted education, particularly in the South. Civil-rights officials reviewed states and districts with the largest racial disparities in gifted education, questioning their reliance on traditional intelligence tests. South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and many individual districts reached agreements with the government to adjust their standards. Other states and districts adapted without federal action.

In these states, students can qualify as gifted with top scores on traditional tests. But if they don't, they can make the grade by doing well on alternative tests. The newer tests are designed to identify gifted minority and low-income white children whose language skills lag because of deficiencies in early schooling or home environment.

Some of the alternative tests don't use words at all. Elementary- school students, for instance, might be required to detect patterns of geometric shapes. Others let students manipulate tangible objects, such as letter tiles. Research shows minority children tend to score higher on these tests than on traditional ones.

In Alabama, students who fall just short on these alternative tests may still qualify by getting credit for leadership, motivation or creativity. High grade-point averages are also now more widely used as a basis for admitting students to gifted classes. But an "A" in a low- achieving, inner-city school counts as much as an "A" in an affluent suburban school with a tougher curriculum.

In Alabama and Georgia, black students in gifted programs have more than doubled since the late 1990s. Georgia now counts 15,880 gifted black students, or 15% of its gifted population, up from 5,813, or 9%, in 1996. Blacks make up 38% of all Georgia schoolchildren. The number of gifted black students in Alabama last year rose to 4,480, or 15% of the gifted population, up from 1,637, or 8.6%, in 1998. That is still well short of the 36.4% black share of all students in Alabama.

In North Carolina, the number of black students identified as gifted rose 21%, to 8,777, in 2002-03, up from 7,251 in 1998-99. Chattanooga, Tenn., has 166 gifted African-American students, up from 62 in 1998- 99.

White students have taken advantage of the new opportunities as well, though at a slower rate of increase. In Charleston, S.C., the number of black students identified as gifted has more than tripled to 1,100, or 4.7% of all black students, from 333 in 1998-99, or 1.3%. Over the same period, the number of gifted whites more than doubled, to 4,907, or 28.6% of all white students, up from 2,086, or 12.7%. The proportion of Charleston students considered gifted has grown from 5.8% to 14.6% of total enrollment.

This growth has strained class size in some gifted programs. To limit expansion and make sure that minority students become better represented, a few jurisdictions have set lower standards only for nonwhites.

Florida maintained a separate track into gifted programs for minority and low-income students until 2002, when it eliminated the racial preference in response to lawsuits by white students denied gifted status. Following the rule change, black participation in gifted education in Florida fell slightly in the fall of 2003.

In Charleston, W.Va., most white students take a traditional intelligence test, but most minority, as well as some low-income white students, are given a nontraditional test. Cut-off scores vary too. Whites must score 127 or above overall, while "historically underrepresented groups" -- black, low-income and disabled students -- need only 120 on any of three sections of the nontraditional test, along with strong grades and achievement scores. The number of black gifted students has nearly tripled to 38 this year from 14 in 1998-99.

In Tennessee, teachers refer students for evaluation for gifted programs based on 16 characteristics, including being "at risk for environmental, cultural or economic factors." Students may be admitted based on school grades and awards, nonverbal tests or creativity.

Franklin, Tenn., reacted to the establishment of the new guidelines four years ago by creating a special, district-wide class for "profoundly gifted" students with intelligence quotients of 145 or above. Almost all of the students were white. Franklin later eliminated the I.Q. requirement out of concern that the reliance on just one criterion violated state regulations.

Gifted-education officials in South Carolina say some teachers complain that some students who qualify as gifted are faltering in their regular classes. These students may fall further behind when they are pulled out of regular classes for special offerings, the officials say.

Prof. Joyce VanTassel-Baska of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who co-developed South Carolina's new test, found in a recent follow-up study that a "significant minority" of students identified as gifted by that test are soon placed on academic probation from the gifted program -- with the threat of removal if their regular grades don't improve.

"I went nuts when I heard that," says Prof. VanTassel-Baska. "What good does it do to find kids who look very promising and then, because it takes them a while to adjust, put them on probation?" In response to her study, the state is standardizing guidelines for removing students from gifted programs.

The same study found that gifted third- through seventh-graders identified by the test Prof. VanTassel Baska helped develop are often weak in verbal and organizational skills. But it also concluded, based on state test scores for 2002-03, that these students improve their verbal scores during their second year in gifted programs and in math surpass students identified by traditional tests.

South Carolina students are automatically eligible for gifted programs if they score in the top 4% overall on a traditional test designed to measure aptitude. Otherwise, they can qualify with high scores on either the verbal or math sections of an aptitude test (which is similar to an intelligence exam) and an achievement test. If they reach those heights in aptitude or achievement, but not both, they have to pass either the verbal or math sections of the test Prof. VanTassel-Baska helped design.

Under this system, minority children often qualify only on the basis of nonverbal scores, officials say. "Some people say they're weaker students," says Jane Snyder, gifted-education coordinator for Greenville County. "I say, 'Weak in what way?' Obviously, they're strong in mathematical skills."

Greenville has attracted foreign employers such as a BMW plant but has pockets of poverty left by the closing of textile mills. Although district enrollment is 28% African-American, for decades its gifted program was almost exclusively white.

"You could go on any day into a gifted program, it was quite obvious that it was an all-white program," says Leola Robinson, one of two black members of the Greenville school board. "I've had white teachers tell me they began to get grief from white families if they admitted some students of color into the program."

Aided by the new test, Greenville has nearly doubled the number of black gifted students, to 606 last year, or 7.6% of gifted students, up from 320 in 1999-2000. Gifted white students have increased 43.3%, to 7,027 last year, from 4,904 in 1999-2000.

Greenville has also tailored its gifted curriculum to students who have difficulty reading by emphasizing hands-on lessons. In math, third- through fifth-graders simplify algebraic equations by removing number cubes and chess pawns -- which stand for the unknown X -- from either side of a scale. Once they have mastered this approach, it is easier for them to make the leap to abstract equations and working on paper.

In a temporary classroom at Greenview Elementary, where 87.2% of students have household incomes at or below the poverty line, gifted- education teacher Anne Stockman recently gave the verbal section of the test Prof. VanTassel-Baska helped develop to nine second- and third-graders, including six African-Americans and one Hispanic student. Eight-year-old Sequoia Brown, who is African-American, said she wants to join the program "so I can be smarter" and become a doctor or veterinarian.

Unlike an administrator of a traditional test, Ms. Stockman didn't offer just brief instructions. Instead, she helped the students practice the types of items they will encounter on the test.

On an overhead projector, Ms. Stockman jotted down a word problem similar to one the students were about to encounter. Hands flew up, and she identified correct answers. Then, armed with scratch paper and letter tiles, students had 15 minutes to do the task individually on the test.

The new approach has made a difference at Greenview. The school's 19 gifted students include 10 African-Americans and one Hispanic, up from only two minority students out of seven in the gifted program in 2000. Seven of the 11 gifted minorities at Greenview, including TiShanna Smith, were identified through nontraditional means -- either the alternative test or school grades.

TiShanna qualified by acing a math-achievement test and the math portion of the alternative test. TiShanna, who will take high-level math and English courses next year in middle school and says she wants to become a pediatrician, says the gifted class has whetted her appetite: "I'd like to go all week long," instead of for three hours.

Some Greenville students are now fulfilling that dream, but almost all are white. In prior years, all gifted students in the county left their regular classes for only a few hours of special attention each week in their own school buildings. This year, the district established a full-time center for "highly gifted" third graders: the top 2% based on traditional aptitude and achievement tests. The center will add a grade each year until it serves third- through eighth- graders. Although cutbacks in state aid have strapped the district financially -- it eliminated 229 teaching positions this year -- it gave a laptop computer to every student at the center. On Tuesdays after school, a volunteer from Mensa, the society of people with high I.Q.'s, offers magic lessons.

School-board members say the gifted center will lure prosperous families to the area who might otherwise be skeptical of Greenville's schools. "No matter how many Ph.D.'s you bring here, we can handle your kids," says board member William Herlong, a lawyer. He dismisses the weekly "pull out" program for TiShanna Smith and other gifted students as "not highly challenging."

Susan Simmons transferred her third-grader, Stephen, to the center after hearing the same message about the pull-out program. "I talked to three of the gifted teachers, and they told me they had seen a real change in the ability level of the children," she says. "They said it wasn't a real challenge class, just mildly accelerated."

Of 64 students at the gifted center this year, 59 are white, three Asian-American, one biracial, and one African-American. None came from Greenview Elementary. Of 108 invitees for next year, four are black, according to Ms. Snyder, the gifted-education coordinator.

Carmen Harris, an assistant professor of African-American history at the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg and the mother of the biracial student in the program, says the district should do more to inform minority parents about how their children can qualify for the gifted center.

"At this age, what my daughter is getting educationally and socially is good," Prof. Harris says. "But there are issues I have to worry about for my child that white parents don't. I am concerned about first-love relationships as she approaches her teen years. I wonder if there will be a boy there who will want to date her. I'm also concerned about the long-term effect of being in a mostly white culture on her ability to interact with nonwhites."

Mr. Herlong says the board won't adjust standards to admit more minorities to the center. "We're not here to socially re-engineer," he says.