The West Windsor-Plainsboro, New Jersey School District in the Spring of 2007 contracted with the Summer Institute for the Gifted to undertake a Program Evaluation of the District’s Middle School Gifted Program.
The Summer Institute’s report follows.
##M:[more]##The project focused on programs for the exceptionally able or gifted student in the two middle schools of the District.
The project consisted of 3 Major Components:
1. A pre-study by the internal team with support from consultants
2. A review conducted by consultants
3. Recommendations from both the internal team and the consultants
I. Positives and strengths noted by the evaluation team:
SIG was honored to be a part of a process in which educators self-reflect and take action to improve their offerings for their most capable students. In particular, we were impressed that the District sought to improve services and was open to the scrutiny of outside evaluators. We further note the rich variety of academic, artistic, and extracurricular activities and programming in the middle school and the fact that the district has specific programs for middle school gifted students. We encountered staff who were professional and welcoming and students who were delightful, insightful, and intelligent.
II. In the second phase of the project we established questions to guide us in our review of several components.
A. Program Philosophy.
How well does the written philosophy of the WW-P gifted program reflect promising practices in gifted education based on current research and literature in the field?
We note that the WW-P Mission and Philosophy should include several things that are missing. One of these things is a district statement that recognizes the learning profile of gifted students. A suggested Learning Profile Statement would mention that gifted students differ from their chronological peers in pacing, knowledge base, memory, and depth of thinking. It should further be noted that gifted students also differ from their peers in their level of intensity, expression, divergent thinking, and creative productivity.
The district’s responsibility to gifted students should be stated in the district mission and philosophy. That responsibility includes a commitment to enhanced, differentiated learning, a commitment to nurturing diverse talents, a commitment to a multiple service delivery model, and a commitment to formal identification of gifted students. The validity of a district’s Mission and Philosophy is increased when the programs are district-wide, when they include core and special subject teachers and are strong and purposeful.
B. Identification Procedures.
How well does the assessment of gifted learners for educational services reflect the National Association for Gifted Children’s program standards for identification?
We found that the current identification of students is not sufficiently described in writing at the middle school level. The identification appears to be overly informal with self-selection being the main method of identification for the PRISM program. We recommend that WW-P look to the NAGC standards for identification when updating the identification documents. These standards are summarized below.
NAGC’s Five Guiding Principles of Student Identification
1. A comprehensive and cohesive process for student nomination must be coordinated in order to determine eligibility for gifted education services. Information about student nomination procedures, characteristics of gifted students, and gifted education services should be provided annually to families, community members, students, and all school staff. This information should be available in the languages of the district in brochures, take-home materials, website information, library access, etc. The pool of students should include all students. Once nominated, students should be screened within a reasonable time period rather than waiting for a specified, scheduled time within the school year. Training opportunities should occur throughout the school year and in a variety of settings to encourage attendance and participation. School libraries should contain materials related to giftedness specifically for parents.
2. Instruments used for student assessment to determine eligibility for gifted education services must measure diverse abilities, talents, strengths, and needs in order to provide students an opportunity to demonstrate any strengths.
The Assessment should be responsive to students’ economic conditions, gender, developmental differences, handicapping conditions, and other factors that mitigate against fair assessment practices. Students identified in all designated areas of giftedness within a school district should be assessed consistently across grade levels. Student assessments should be sensitive to all stages of talent development.
3. A student assessment profile of individual strengths and needs must be developed to plan appropriate intervention.
A variety of assessment procedures and instruments, based on individual differences and needs, should be readily available. Eligibility for services should be based on a comprehensive analysis of student needs rather than on one score or on only one type of assessment method. Individual case studies (or education plans) should be developed and regularly revisited for students in both academics and visual and performing arts. The assessment profile should reflect the uniqueness of individual gifted students. The assessment instruments and procedures should provide information relative to determining the specific needs of individual students.
4. All student identification procedures and instruments must be based on current theory and research.
Assessments of visual and performing arts should incorporate a diverse display of talent collected by several approaches. Student assessment data should be balanced between academic & non-academic sources, formal and informal strategies, standardized and non-standardized assessments, subjective and objective data, & qualitative and quantitative data.
5. Written procedures for student identification must include at the very least provisions for informed consent, student retention, student reassessment, student exiting, and appeals procedures.
District guidelines and procedures should be reviewed and revised when necessary. We recommend that WW-P clearly define & document methods of identifying middle school students for any pull-out program as well as for subject/talent area modifications. We recommend a case study approach in which students are identified using multiple methods and in which students have an educational plan such as a Gifted IEP. Procedures should be communicated to stakeholders and constituents through an assessment committee that regularly reviews student data and makes recommendations for student programming.
C. Program Delivery.
How well does the current program delivery reflect the program services as described in the district documents?
Our team of three consultants visited and recorded observations of 65 classes over the course of five days. We used a checklist of strategies to document the numbers of instances we observed each strategy being used. Overall, the classes seemed to be strongest in organization and in using concepts and generalizations within relevant content. Processes were generally purposeful and there was a considerable amount of group work observed.
However, as a result of our observations, we do feel that there are many opportunities for growth in terms of implementing more and varied types of strategies that can enhance learning for gifted students. Orbital studies, learning contracts, synectics, and complex instruction were not observed at all. Tiered activities, learning style assignments, simulations, community-based products, negotiated criteria, and Multiple Intelligences-based orientations were only observed once each in the 65 classes. Compacting, using tiered assignments, employing learning centers, using creative problem solving processes, creating professional types of products, & providing a minimally structured learning environment were observed twice each.
D. Perceptions of Stakeholders.
What do the program’s stakeholders think about the gifted program?
In pursuit of this question we conducted 6 focus group meetings with students, one parent meeting and one school board meeting. We also surveyed the teachers.
Common Themes from the School Board meeting:
• Concerns about identification, funding, inconsistencies, appropriateness regarding the PRISM Program
• Concerns that GT training for teachers is weak
• A belief that students are under substantial pressure
• Issues concerning AE math, mostly that there are no other AE options
Common Themes from the Parent Meeting:
• Regarding PRISM: Concerns about identification, communications, scheduling issues, a belief that the program is understaffed.
• Regarding CORE subjects: feelings that they are boring, repetitive, inappropriate, achievement-based, lacking in creativity, concern that AE is for math only
• Regarding homework: belief that it is of poor quality, not meaningful
• Beliefs that cycles can be poor, and are limited
• Beliefs that students are under a lot of stress
• A feeling that counselors are needed for gifted students
Common Themes from the Student Meeting:
• The core classes are boring, slow, and repetitive
• The core classes are restrictive, they feel they have no student voice
• PRISM can be restrictive
• There is too much homework and much of it is meaningless homework
• There is a lot of pressure and stress
• AE classes are needed in all core subjects
• There are PRISM scheduling conflicts
• There were also positive comments about PRISM
• The core classes have no application to real life
• The cycle classes are meaningless
• Morning meeting time is meaningless
Common Themes from the Teacher Survey:
In order to assess the teachers’ attitudes we conducted a written survey.
115 Middle School Teachers completed our survey at a district wide in-service day. Highlights of the results of that survey are:
• Teachers seem to know something about the PRISM program but seem less aware of the PEP program at the elementary level.
• They are generally not aware of their students’ involvement in PEP and are at all levels of awareness as to whether their students participate in PRISM and in the accelerated math program.
• Teachers appear to feel that they are doing more toward differentiation than was observed:
-14% feel that they put a great deal of effort into differentiation
-73% feel that they put a fair amount or some effort into differentiation.
-13% feel that they put hardly any effort into differentiation.
• Yet 79% of those responding believe they are meeting the needs of exceptionally able students some or a fair amount of the time, with 6% feeling that they meet those needs a great deal of the time.
• Regarding Professional Development:
-12% felt they had received a fair amount or a great deal of professional development in gifted education.
-88% felt they had received some or hardly any. Even more teachers had received less training in gifted education before entering this school district.
-78% of the teachers express a willingness to participate in such training.
• Regarding parents:
-Parents were reported as contacting teachers very little about their gifted students.
*86% hardly at all or some contact
*14% at a fair or great level.
• Other teacher responses
-Teachers have not requested help from district experts very much
*68% hardly at all
*23% some
*9% a fair or great deal.
-They indicate they have been offered support more than they have
requested it, though 84% feel that they have received little or some support.
-Teachers seem to think they don’t have much time to plan together for interdisciplinary lessons, though we understand them to have team planning periods. 73% felt they had hardly any or just some time for planning together.
-Regarding general knowledge about the district’s gifted program, 73% felt that they knew some or hardly anything about it. An even greater number knew less about the state code, with 81% expressing that they knew hardly anything about that.
Overall it seems to us that teachers believe they are doing more for gifted students than they actually are. They could benefit from an extensive professional development program in meeting the needs of exceptionally able students in their classes. We recommend increased communications regarding district /state philosophy / policy as well as what is happening in your district. District expertise can do more to reach out to teachers on working with gifted students in their classes.
III. Professional Development to Support Teachers to Better Meet the Needs of Gifted Students
We examined Professional Development in the District to learn how services for teachers were supporting their work with gifted learners. WW-P has recognized the need for differentiation, but it appears that the focus of this training has been on the inclusion of special needs students and has not been fully utilized for gifted students. We recommend that training be extended in this area to include differentiation for gifted students in modifying content, process, product, and learning environment according to the characteristics of these highly able students.
Specifically we would recommend the identification of and partnering of mentors within the district who are practicing gifted education strategies with teachers who are striving to improve their toolkit of strategies in this field. We also recommend regularly scheduled in-service in gifted education for an identified cohort of teachers who have gifted cluster groups in their classes.
Effective in-service training should be followed up with team meetings to plan implementation of new ideas that are learned. There should also be time to review new strategies together with other teachers after they have been tried. Additionally, we recommend that there be administrative follow-up in the classrooms to insure that improvement in this area is occurring. Effective staff development is sustained over a long period of time. The content of this training should include characteristics of gifted students, varied strategies for the differentiation of content, process, product and learning environment, and individualized assessment.
IV. Another important aspect of this evaluation was to identify strengths in the existing programs upon which to build in improving the program.
We believe the strengths of the WW-P School District are many, including a variety of rich programming, a level of commitment to gifted students through programming and the expressed need for an evaluation, staff with high potential, and students with high potential. It was also important to identify challenges that the district faces in moving forward with these recommendations. These include
• Having the motivation to improve when other kinds of criteria are already attained
• Agreeing on a universal philosophy for gifted education
• Engaging all staff in meaningful staff development
• Prioritizing issues within and without the evaluation
• Visualizing an even more excellent district
V. Recommended actions:
After meeting with the internal evaluation team and reviewing the highlights of this evaluation data, we recommend the following actions as a result of the data and discussions with the District:
1. PRISM should be an elective class for students in all three middle school grade levels.
• This program should be offered to the identified top 3- 5% of your population with some self-selection allowed. This period should focus on Type III activities as defined in the Enrichment Trial Model as small group or individual investigations of real life problems.
• Competitions should be limited during this time to those that satisfy Type III criteria. Other competitions should be moved to after-school clubs and activities like the other groups that are already offered after-school, such as Math Olympiad.
• Students would be identified through a case study approach in which available performance data, anecdotal records, and teacher recommendations create a profile of a student who is exceptional in general intellectual ability or show the potential for exceptional performance. The identification of these students would be handled by a committee toward the end of the year for the following year’s placement.
2. Cluster Grouping for acceleration and enrichment should occur in all core subject areas for academically talented students.
• We recommend one top honors group (or two if the population is large enough) in each subject for approximately 10% of the population. These students would be identified through a case study approach in which available performance data, anecdotal records, and teacher recommendations create a profile of a student who is exceptional in each core area. The identification of these students would be handled by a committee toward the end of the year for the following year’s placement. We recommend that this model be implemented in stages, with perhaps only 2 or 3 areas implemented in the initial year.
• This new approach can build on the already very successful Math A and E and Honors programs, which show that grouping students by ability can work in a district like WW-P. In fact, Math actually has four levels of grouping, including a special needs group.
• Professional development needs to be designed for successful implementation of differentiated instruction for gifted students. A good place to start is to look at the strategies we looked for in our observations. The list of strategies is included in the Appendix.
3. We recommend that the philosophy be re-written as outlined in the
discussion of the first question above.
4. We recommend that the identification processes be re-written as described in question two above and in the first two summary recommendations.
