Education Week - Moving Beyond the Mainstream - October 30, 2013 - S34

bringing struggling learners up to speed
than they will be in challenging their
most advanced learners who have already
mastered the minimum standards set by
the common core-an issue for educators
even before before the shift to the common
core, she said.
"If we look at school reform efforts
over the last decades here in the United
States, a very noble cause has been to
focus on our most fragile learners," said
Ms. Krisel. "And we absolutely must take
care of all of our children, but by doing
that, we've established this artificial
plateau. It's not fair to [gifted] students.
They need to be challenged to the greatest
degree possible."
By the same token, says Ms. Krisel, the
common-core standards are more aligned
with gifted education pedagogy than
previous state standards, putting gifted
educators in a strong position to implement
the standards and collaborate with
classroom teachers around best practices
and strategies.
"Our gifted education experts are
poised to be in a really good position to
join this conversation," said Ms. Krisel.
"Now's an opportunity for us to sit down
with our colleagues and say, 'Here's how
we use interest-based instruction to engage
these kids long enough to master
the standards.' "
The Bui is a gifted-and-talented-certified
teacher at Edison Elementary School
in Ontario, Calif., which has a program
for gifted and talented learners in grades
3-8. He hopes the standards will raise
levels of understanding for all students,
including gifted learners.
"Everyone's going to benefit ... because
the standards are so clear and so specific,"
he said. But the standards force
teachers and students to approach teaching
and learning differently, said Mr. Bui.
"There are so many more skills involved
now," he said. "In one standard, they will
ask the child to critique and evaluate, comprehend,
and discern. The challenge for us
is to turn them from answering machines
into thinking machines."
Those teachers who have received
training in gifted education should feel
well-prepared to implement the common
core, he said.
"There are so many parallels," said Mr.
Bui. But, "nothing matters if you don't
change how you teach," he added. The idea
of raising the bar for students is also the
same idea as raising the bar for teachers."
Implementation Concerns
But not everyone feels that the common
core is having a positive impact on gifted
learners. Some parents, for instance, say
the new standards have made education
more rote and scripted.
Gina Tampio said her son, who is in 2nd
grade and an advanced learner, has lost
interest in school since the common-core
standards rolled out at his elementary
school last year. (The school he attends no
longer classifies students as gifted.)
"My main concern is that the the common
core has made the curriculum so rigid
and rote and, frankly, just boring," she said.
"When my son has to identify the main
theme in a story, the story is so boring and
nonsensical that he has learned not to care."
Her son's school, Daniel Warren Elementary
in Mamaroneck, N.Y., has
moved to a prepackaged common-core
curriculum that Ms. Tampio said is
highly prescriptive and requires every-
n
one to learn at the same pace.
In a statement emailed to Education
Week, school district officials deny that
claim.
"The Rye Neck School District is proud
of its challenging curriculum and its attention
to the needs of all learners," it
said. "We are a high-performing district,
one that will naturally adapt to the common
core while continuing to exceed that
baseline with individualized attention to
every one of our students."
But Ms. Tampio said that her son has
not experienced an individualized curriculum.
When her son's teacher tried to
differentiate the curriculum for him, Ms.
Tampio said he was simply given extra
work.
"In some ways that backfired because it
was almost a punishment for him," she said.
To move beyond simply giving students
extra work to challenge them, teachers
must undergo intensive professional development
to understand how to properly
implement the standards, said Susan K.
Johnsen, a professor of educational psychology
at Baylor University in Waco,
Texas.
"The adaptation of the standards is
going to be dependent upon the professional
development that teachers receive,"
she said. "Teachers need to learn how to
go about doing more problem-based approaches,
and they need the support and
resources to do that."
Assessment Concerns
One question mark that remains is how
gifted students will fare under the new
common-core-aligned assessments, said
Ms. Clarenbach of the National Association
for Gifted Students.
She is concerned that the grade-level
assessments will not provide an accurate
picture of where gifted students may be
if the students are far above grade-level
standards.
"When assessments have ceilings, you
can't tell where a student is performing,"
she said. "Who's going to take the blame
when you can't show learning growth because
the assessment won't allow it? It's
an example of how gifted students have
not been included in the consideration of
things."
Although there was not a specific advisory
committee assigned to look at the needs of
gifted learners, gifted education experts
were brought in to address the needs of
those learners for the Smarter Balanced assessment,
said Shelbi K. Cole, the director
of mathematics for Smarter Balanced Assessment
Consortium, one of the two state
consortia developing general tests for the
common core.
Likewise, features have been built into
the assessments designed by the Partnership
for the Assessment of Readiness for
College and Careers, or PARCC, to accurately
measure the knowledge of gifted students,
said officials at that testing consortium.
They said that feedback from sample tests
suggests advanced learners will be challenged
by the test.
Mr. Dupree, who works with math teachers
in the Los Angeles district, said he is
excited for the new assessments but concerned
about how assessments with more
open-ended questions will be scored.
"When you're opening yourself up for
students to demonstrate what they know,
you need to be open to the idea that
they're showing you something you don't
know," he said. n
S34 | EDUCATION WEEK OCTOBER 30, 2013
Building on a Standard
Researchers at the University of
Southern California, working in
collaboration with teachers, developed
a sample lesson plan to show how
a common-core standard can be
adapted for gifted students
in grades K-8.
COMMON-CORE STANDARD
Anchor Standard #7-Evaluate content presented in diverse media
formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
GIFTED EDUCATION STANDARDS
Critical Thinking-Judge with criteria, relate, prove with evidence,
determine the relevance.
Problem Solving-Define the problem, hypothesize, gather data,
present a solution.
OBJECTIVE
Students will be able to define how various types of evidence can
facilitate or hinder understanding of a problem in any discipline/
subject area.
ACTIVITY
* Show students pictures of a beauty
pageant, a dog show, and a flower show.
* Ask and/or research with students the various types of evidence
used to determine the "most" beautiful, etc., for each of the
shows.
* Discuss why evidence is an important variable for decisionmaking.
DEEPER DISCUSSION
The teacher presents an idea to the class: "There are many
different types of evidence. All types of evidence are not the same."
Working in groups, the students share situations or events
in literature, mathematics, science, or social studies where
the problem doesn't match the evidence collected to solve it.
Students are then given evidence cards that define different types
of evidence, such as statistical, experimental, or observational.
Students sort the cards based on how helpful each type of
evidence would be in solving the problem they have identified.
REAL-WORLD CONNECTION
After students share and discuss their efforts, the class tries to
identify other examples-potentially from current events-where
evidence is needed to solve a problem.
SOURCE: Sandra N. Kaplan, University of Southern California
Education Week - Moving Beyond the Mainstream - October 30, 2013

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