Education Week - February 22, 2017 - 32

LESSONS FROM
A LEADER

Students' Needs
Are Paramount
Schools are frequently
tied to student placement
by their schedule. Build
your master schedule
around your students'
needs, always.

Advocate for All
Students
Look at the data, make
the tough decisions, follow
through, and follow up
to ensure excellence
and equity for all.

Inspect What
You Expect
Monitor and address
misconceptions and
stereotypes about gifted
students and how
you deliver gifted services.
Take corrective action
if you drift off course.

"
|

In 2015, Seminole County, in partnership with the
University of Central Florida, was awarded a five-year,
$2.4 million federal grant to support its work-dubbed
Project ELEVATE-to expand gifted education to a
broader base of students. ELEVATE, short for "English
Learner Excellence eVolving through Advanced Teacher
Education," reflects the program's focus on training
teachers to better recognize potential giftedness.
Seminole was the only school district to receive a
grant through the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented
Students Education Program in 2015; funds through
the program are more commonly awarded to university researchers. If funded for the full five years, Project ELEVATE will expand in Seminole County to seven
additional schools, including two middle schools.
Too often, it's easy to look at students in lowerperforming schools and think only of remediation,
Griffin says.
"The greatest way for students to gain success is
to be challenged," Griffin says. "You have to be very
careful in remedial courses to make sure you're not
lowering the bar."

Making a Difference
So far, the district's efforts to bring more underrepresented students into gifted education have focused
around five highly diverse Title I elementary schools,
says Lukens, 37. While the district's population of
black students averages about 15 percent in its elementary schools, black student enrollment at the five
schools ranges from about 31 to 56 percent.
The district's population of English-language
learners in elementary schools is around 8 percent,
compared to 10 to 21 percent in the Project ELEVATE
schools. And the schools also have a high population
of economically disadvantaged students: 76 to 95
percent, compared to the district's overall average of
52 percent in its elementaries.
At those five schools, gifted enrollment has risen
from 62 students in September 2013 to 168 as of last
June-hard evidence that the initiative is making a difference, Lukens says. Across the district, the share of
low-income and black and Hispanic students who are
identified as gifted has been trending upward.
The proportion of Hispanic students identified
as gifted has risen from 10 percent of the overall
gifted student enrollment to 14 percent. For black
students, the share has risen from 4 percent to 6
percent, while the proportion of poor students who
are identified grew from 22 percent to 34 percent

between 2013 and 2016.
White students made up 66 percent of the gifted
elementary student population in 2013 and 58 percent
in 2016. Though the number of white gifted students
increased by nearly 200 students over that time frame,
their share of the overall gifted population decreased.
Asian or Pacific Islander elementary gifted students
held relatively steady at 11 percent in 2013 and 10
percent in 2016.
The number of Asian gifted elementary students increased by more than 20 in that three-year time span.
Wicklow Elementary, in Sanford, Fla., is one of the
schools whose students are benefitting from the extra
attention of Project ELEVATE. When the initiative
began, Wicklow Elementary-highly diverse, with 85
percent of its students eligible for free and reducedprice lunches-had just three out of about 700
students identified as gifted, says Principal Martina
Herndon.
Now, more than 40 children have been identified.
"We try to exclude all of the other elements that
often overshadow the giftedness," Herndon explains.
That means looking beyond students who are the
hand-raisers or the straight-A earners.
"You have to be open-minded and have a panoramic
view of a child," Herndon says. "Sometimes your view
gets so crowded because of [students'] home lives. But
that doesn't mean they're not gifted.
This kind of project would be expected from Griffin
and Lukens.
In 1997, Griffin became principal of what was then
Lakeview Middle School. The school system was under
a desegregation order from the U.S. Department of
Justice, and Lakeview Middle, with its high population
of poor students, was identified as having vestiges of
inequity. "The Justice Department told the district, 'Fix
it,'" Griffin says.
With the help of an "incredible team," Griffin led the
transformation of the middle school into a pre-International Baccalaureate magnet school that offers concentrations in fine arts and communications. He was
able to hire the school staff, and eventually oversaw
construction of a new facility, now called Millenium
Middle School.
"I learned early on that if you give great teachers great opportunities and great resources, students
will be successful," Griffin says. "When I put my very
strongest teachers with my most struggling students,
those students thrived. And in a very short time, a
school of 900 students that people did not want to attend had a waiting list."

"The greatest way for students to gain success
is to be challenged," Griffin says.

Education Week Leaders To Learn From 2017

Education Week - February 22, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 22, 2017