Education Week - June 21, 2017 - 15

14%

A CLOSER LOOK:
TULSA, OKLA.

14%

Tulsa has double the
percentage of Englishlanguage learners compared
with the state, but the
percentage of gifted Englishlearners in the district is the
same as the state's.

Percent

Gifted
Students
Oklahoma

EnglishLearners

Gifted EnglishLearners

SOURCE: Education Week
Research Center Analysis of Civil
Rights Data Collection, 2017

Tulsa District

BEHIND THE DATA ON GIFTED/ELL STUDENTS
What is gifted education?
According to the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights, gifted programs are special
educational opportunities that take place during regular school hours for students "endowed with
a high degree of mental ability or who demonstrate unusual physical coordination, creativity,
interest, or talent." They include enriched curriculum or an accelerated pace through individual
classes or grades; while they can be at
any K-12 grade, they are focused on K-8,
and OCR also collects separate data on
participation in advanced high school
Nearly 1 in 10 students in U.S. schools is an
coursework, such as Advanced Placement
English-learner, and they make up a slightly
or International Baccalaureate classes,
which is not counted as part of gifted
higher percentage of students in schools
programs.

that offer gifted education programs. But
in a new analysis, Education Week found
fewer than 3 percent of students in gifted
programs nationwide is still learning
English. Here's how we approached the
analysis.

Where do the data on Englishlearners and giftedness come from?
The Education Week Research Center
used 2013-14 data from the Education
Department's Civil Rights Data Collection.
We focused our analysis on data related
to overall school characteristics, languageacquisition status, and enrollment.

What is the Civil Rights Data Collection?
Every two years since 1968, the Education Department has collected information on
demographics and educational opportunities for students of different genders, races, Englishproficiency levels, and disabilities. Every public school in the country is required to respond to the
survey. These data are used both for enforcement of federal civil rights laws and for research to
improve education for these students.
The data we analyzed are from the 2013-14 school years; the Education Department is collecting
2015-16 data now. You can find more information on the Civil Rights Data Collection on our
Frequently Asked Questions page online.

How did you analyze gaps in schools' gifted education programs?
We focused our research on the majority of schools nationwide where students are enrolled
in gifted and talented programs. This analysis did not include juvenile justice facilities, but did
include schools serving all grade levels. We also compared enrollment of English-learners in schools
that reported providing gifted education to their enrollment at schools that do not have gifted
programs.

There's newer or different information on gifted education available from my
state, district, or school. Why not use that?
We used 2013-14 data because it's the most recent data that allow us to conduct a comparative
examination of gifted education across the nation as a whole.
The Civil Rights Data Collection does not include information on state laws related to gifted
education in schools, and state definitions of gifted education may differ from that used by the
federal government. For data that seemed questionable, Education Week also asked state education
department officials to review the data and supply any corrections or changes that could be
supported by additional evidence. Additionally, the CRDC rounds some student counts to protect
individuals from being identified, which may also may affect the results.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

other tests, including the Naglieri
Nonverbal Ability Test, which was
developed specifically to identify
potentially talented children with
lower-level English-language skills.
Starting next year, Tulsa will
also target English-learners who
show faster-than-average growth
on the state English-languageproficiency test. According to Matthews, that's a strategy that shows
strong potential as a way of identifying gifted students, as they often
learn languages more quickly than
other students.
The district still asks teachers
and parents to recommend students
with potential, but they have become
more systematic. For example, twice
a year Mitchell asks all parents to fill
out behavioral checklists in English
or Spanish on their child, which are
used to scout potentially talented
students who hadn't shown up on the
screening tests.
"We triangulate all our tests and
data and say, 'Who is not being recommended? Why is this child not on
our radar?' " Wilbur said.

Seeing Past Language
At McClure Elementary, where
today 1 in 4 students is an Englishlearner, and at Marshall Elementary, where the English-learner
ratio is 1-to-5, gifted facilitator Patrice O'Dea has been working with
ELL teachers to start identifying
gifted English-learners even earlier
than 2nd grade. First graders who
show promise but do not necessarily
have perfect grades join an "explorers club" that works on science- and
technology-related group projects in
school for a few hours a week during the year, while O'Dea observes.
"In math and science, they catch
on to the concepts really fast," she
said. "I might explain something
four or six times for a regular kid.
For gifted, I explain once, and they
get it."
That's common, according to
Rachael Mun, a gifted-education
researcher at the University of North
Texas. "If you look at individual domains [to identify gifted students],
you would capture a lot more [English-learner] students, particularly if

you could bypass some of the language
barriers we put up," Mun said."If you
have students who are gifted in math
or science, ... you should really be
working to serve them in that area,
while still working on the areas where
they aren't as advanced."
O'Dea recalled one 1st grade English-learner from a high-poverty,
Hispanic and Native American
background.
"She was one I did not identify
right away; she just was quiet, very
reserved, so she didn't stand out,"
O'Dea recalled. After two years in
the explorers club, the girl regularly
led her classmates in projects and
eventually tested into the gifted
program.
"Her ability to articulate thoughts
and ideas to others her age, is just
going gangbusters," O'Dea said.
The increased outreach has infused more life into the district's
gifted program overall. After Tulsa's
gifted enrollment fell from more
than 5,400 in 2014 to 4,100 in 2016,
in keeping with falling overall enrollment, it had risen again to 4,500
by this spring. For the first time this
year, every elementary and middle
school had at least a part-time gifted
education instructor, Van Eman said.
In Mitchell, the program has
grown from fewer than 20 students
in 2014 to more than 50 today, with
a majority of them English-learners.
The future of gifted education in
general is uncertain, though. Most
states are still in the early stages
of reaching for equity in gifted education. President Donald Trump
rolled back Obama administration
regulations fleshing out how states
should implement the federal education law's accountability changes,
and his fiscal 2018 budget proposal
would eliminate $12 million in federal gifted education grants.
Coverage of the experiences of low-income,
high-achieving students is supported
in part by a grant from the Jack Kent
Cooke Foundation, at www.jkcf.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
Visit the INSIDE SCHOOL RESEARCH
blog, which tracks news and trends
on this issue. www.edweek.org/blogs

EDUCATION WEEK | June 21, 2017 | www.edweek.org | 15

http://www.jkcf.org http://www.edweek.org/blogs http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - June 21, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - June 21, 2017