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Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind

March 2, 2004

 By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

MOUNTAIN GROVE, Mo. - Before her second birthday, Audrey

Walker recognized sequences of five colors. When she was 6,

her father, Michael, overheard her telling a little boy:

"No, no, no, Hunter, you don't understand. What you were

seeing was a flashback."

At school, Audrey quickly grew bored as the teacher drilled

letters and syllables until her classmates caught on. She

flourished, instead, in a once-a-week class for gifted and

talented children where she could learn as fast as her

nimble brain could take her.

But in September, Mountain Grove, a remote rural community

in the Ozarks where nearly three in four students live in

poverty, eliminated all of its programs for the district's

50 or so gifted children like Audrey, who is 8 now.

Struggling with shrinking revenues and new federal mandates

that focus on improving the test scores of the

lowest-achieving pupils, Mountain Grove and many other

school districts across the country have turned to cutting

programs for their most promising students.

"Rural districts like us, we've been literally bleeding to

death," said Gary Tyrrell, assistant superintendent of the

Mountain Grove School District, which has 1,550 students.

The formula for cutting back in hard times was

straightforward, if painful, Mr. Tyrrell said: Satisfy

federal and state requirements first. Then, "Do as much as

we can for the majority and work on down."

Under that kind of a formula, programs for gifted and

talented children have become especially vulnerable.

Unlike services for disabled children, programs for gifted

children have no single federal agency to track them. A

survey by the National Association for Gifted Children

found that 22 states did not contribute toward the costs of

programs for gifted children, and five other states spent

less than $250,000.

Since that survey, released in 2002, the outlook for

programs for the gifted has grown harsher. In Michigan,

state aid for gifted students fell from more than $4

million a year to $250,000. Illinois, which was spending

$19 million a year on programs for fast learners,

eliminated state financing for them. New York was spending

$14 million a year on education for the gifted but has now

cut all money earmarked for gifted children, saying

districts should pay for them out of block grants. Nearly

one in four school districts in Connecticut have eliminated

their programs for gifted students.

The new federal education law, known as No Child Left

Behind, "has almost taken gifted off the radar screen in

terms of people being worried about that group of

learners," said Joyce L. Vantassel-Baska, executive

director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College

of William and Mary.

"In a tight budget environment," Ms. Vantassel-Baska said,

"the decisions made about what gets dropped or not funded

tend to disfavor the smaller programs."

Missouri was reimbursing districts for 75 percent of the

cost of educating gifted children but has reduced the

contribution to 58 percent. In Mountain Grove, an aging

base of voters rejected a proposed tax levy in February.

Schools are now planning to cut seven teachers in the

elementary grades, public financing of team sports and

transportation service within the town's boundaries.

"There are some mandates that you must do from the feds and

the state," Mr. Tyrrell said, citing programs for disabled

children as an example. "Those will be the last to go."

No Child Left Behind is silent on the education of gifted

children. Under the law, schools must test students

annually in reading and math from third grade to eighth

grade, and once in high school.

Schools receiving federal antipoverty money must show that

more students each year are passing standardized tests or

face expensive and progressively more severe consequences.

As long as students pass the exams, the federal law offers

no rewards for raising the scores of high achievers, or

punishment if their progress lags.

Eugene Hickok, acting deputy secretary for elementary and

secondary education at the federal Education Department,

called the closing of programs for highly intelligent

children an unfortunate, "unintended consequence" of No

Child Left Behind. "Laws by definition are rather blunt

instruments," Dr. Hickok said.

He said he did not believe that No Child Left Behind alone

was responsible, adding that some districts blamed the law

unfairly. "It's running for cover to say we can't deal with

your needs because our fundamental requirement is to serve

these other kids," Dr. Hickok said.

He said the administration was not considering revising the

law to protect programs for gifted children, calling such

programs a matter of "state and local control."

The tough choices, in Mountain Grove and districts around

the country, are fueling emotional debates about

educational fairness and where districts should focus

limited resources. Among some educators and parents,

special consideration for gifted children appears to

attract resentment, and here in Mountain Grove, the parents

of gifted children, while concerned, seem reluctant to

demand extra enrichment.

Bridget Williams, the principal of Mountain Grove Middle

School, maintains that very bright children do not deserve

specially tailored classes, especially when the district is

focusing on bringing all children up to a minimum standard

of competence.

"Are they more important than a special-ed kid?" Ms.

Williams asked in an interview with other administrators.

Some teachers did not like to release their smartest

students from regular classes, and one perennial dispute

involved whether or not students who attended the classes

for the gifted should have to make up homework from their

regular classrooms.

Ms. Williams said it was not so much the education, but

merely status, that gifted children lost when their program

was cut in September. "They lost the title," she said.

Others contend that cutting programs for such students

threatens the nation's future by stunting the intellectual

growth of the next generation of innovators. Not only do

gifted children learn faster, but often they learn in a

different way, experts say.

"Many of them will never, ever achieve their potential

without some type of advanced learning opportunities and

resources," said Joseph S. Renzulli, director of the

National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the

University of Connecticut. "Equity goes both ways. It means

we're going to accommodate the needs of students, whether

they're struggling, average or above-average learners."

Carolyn Groves, who taught gifted education here for seven

years, fashioned creative projects intended to stretch the

critical thinking of her students. One unit put "Nursery

Rhymes on Trial," while in another, middle-school students

created the government of Utopia. "Mind benders" gave

students systematic rules for deconstructing challenging

mathematical questions.

"People say, `These kids are smart. They're going to make

it anyway,' " Ms. Groves said. But experts say that gifted

children can easily grow bored and alienated.

"These are the kids who are either going to turn out to be

nuclear scientists or Unabombers," said Ms. Groves, who now

teaches high school remedial students at the vocational

school. "It all depends on which way they're led."

Some parents of Mountain Grove's brightest children try to

make up for the elimination of programs for the gifted. Mr.

Walker and his wife, Marilyn, shuttle Audrey to dance and

Spanish lessons. They encourage her interest in filmmaking

by helping her develop ideas for movies she shoots on the

family's video camera. Mr. Walker said he worried, though,

about other promising children whose parents were too poor

or overworked to offer their own children similar

enrichment.

These days, Mr. Walker said, Audrey no longer enjoys school

and frequently asks to stay home.

In small towns like Mountain Grove, Mr. Walker said, "a

tremendous amount of frustration can build up in these

kids, because they're different, but they don't know why."

When she participated in the classes for the gifted, Audrey

felt less isolated for her bookishness and learned to

manage frustration that used to crush her, when her efforts

did not live up to her vision.

On a deeper level, Mr. Walker said he worried about the

message Mountain Grove was sending to its most promising

students. "Yes, they may achieve great things," Mr. Walker

said. "But I don't think they'll achieve the greatest

things that they're capable of. It's saying it's all right

to aim for mediocrity."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/education/02GIFT.html?ex=1079240250&ei=1&en=08f7fc8765e4071d

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