EducationNews.org

1) Todd, first of all, what got you interested in gifted education?

My interest in gifted education coincided with my son's entrance into public school seven years ago. My wife and I knew early on he was bright, but we did not realize the degree until he was in kindergarten.It was clear to us during the orientation session that our district's services would be appropriate for the other kids but they were not going to meet our son's needs. We raised our concerns about academics at the time, but they were brushed aside.

This pattern continued throughout first grade. By the end of first grade the disconnect between what the district was offering in the classroom and what my son clearly needed became too great to ignore. It was obvious to us that hope alone was not going to be enough.

I became versed in the educational regulations of my state, Pennsylvania, and about giftedness and gifted education more generally. I spoke with people at the Pennsylvania Department of Education about my understanding from the regulations and they were very helpful. I used what I learned at the start of my son's second grade year to initiate his gifted identification process. This was a year ahead of the district's intended schedule.

Once he was identified as needing an individualized educational plan, we had a Gifted IEP Team meeting. The plan proposed was not sufficient.My wife and I then worked at some length, and with some trial and tribulation, with the district to create an appropriate, meaningful educational plan for him.

I testified about the details of this effort to the Pennsylvania Board of Education during the recent revision of Pennsylvania's gifted ed regulations. My testimony to the Board of Education is here: http://www.appliedgifteded.com/pegs-parentstestimony2.pdf

2) What is your present professional position?

I work full time as a special education advocate with a primary focus on gifted educational issues. I help parents prepare for and I attend Gifted IEP Meetings and Mediation Hearings in districts throughout Pennsylvania. Other services I provide include coaching parents on effective advocacy techniques for their day-to-day interactions with teachers and administrators.

I do trainings for districts and Intermediate Units on gifted educational issues. I also perform public speaking engagements and seminars. I also give web-based seminars. Prior to working as an advocate I was in consultative technical sales.

3) What information are most parents and teachers seeking the most?

The first thing that parents want to know once we start talking about their situation with the district is whether or not they are crazy.

Oftentimes the situation the parent describes to me during an initial conversation defies any sort of logic - for example, the 3rd grade child is two or three grades above level in several, perhaps all, his or her courses.

The educational services the gifted child needs are not offered or even discussed with the parent because the district holds a vague concern about some future social experience such as the Senior Prom or driving a car. Parents often aren't sure how to respond effectively to those sorts of statements.

The second thing parents want to know is what they can do about it. There are many options available, but there is a specific order in which any of the available options should be done.The starting point for the initial conversation is always the same: What are the gifted child's present levels of educational performance? Phrased another way, the starting question for advocacy is this: How much of the district's curriculum does the child already know?

At my Intermediate Unit and district-oriented trainings, teachers and administrators want to know about present levels of educational performance testing. Districts tend to make this kind of testing more complicated than it needs to be. Teachers and administrators also want the regulations and requirements explained to them in practical day-to-day terms.

4) How well are the schools currently servicing children of high intelligence?

Schools tend to be better at servicing highly intelligent children who happen to also be high achievers. Most district gifted programs I see are developed with this particular type of gifted child in mind.

Those children who are highly intelligent underachievers or highly intelligent children with learning disabilities or other health impairments have a much lower probability of being appropriately educated without the parent taking an active, at times leading, role.

The wild card in any educational situation is the child's teacher.

Regardless of the school's overall performance with a gifted student population, a talented teacher can make all the difference in a highly intelligent child's educational life.

5) How well are the schools servicing children who are creative or talented?

The answer depends on where the child's gifts and talents lie. If the student's gifts happen to fall in an area that can be easily addressed in the school curriculum- fiction writing, art, and music, for example - the chances are greater that the highly creative student's needs will find an appropriate outlet and be met.

If the student is a very creative "outside the box" thinker, then the challenge is greater. The question becomes how to integrate that highly divergent perspective in classroom situations which might include 20-35 people who do not share the creative student's insights and who may not be able to take part in that creative child's discussions. That can pose a tremendous challenge for the teacher tomaintain the class while supporting the creative child.

If the gifted child's talent is that he or she has an exceptional rate of acquisition and retention, then the ongoing challenge is for the educational team to take that ability into account within the school's curricular framework.

In any situation, the challenge for the parent and, hopefully, the school becomes how to keep the spark of the child's creativity or the fire of their talent from being snuffed out.

6) Tell us about your web site and how it got started and what is on it.

I publish a website, www.AppliedGiftedEd.com , that is specific to gifted educational issues that take place in Pennsylvania public schools.I concentrate on explaining my state's education regulations and the educational concepts that are at work in practical terms. Topics I cover include Present Levels, the Gifted Education Regulations, Identification of Gifted, Common misconceptions, and general advocacy issues, among others.

My advocacy approach is designed to equip people with the ability to make sense of and use the information that they will find on other, more general, gifted sites like the Davidson Institute's excellent site: http://www.gt-cybersource.org .Acceleration is a good example. There is a wealth of research supporting acceleration, the Templeton Foundation Report 'A Nation Deceived' is one example - http://www.nationdeceived.org - however the question remains for any parent doing their research is this:" So, how do I get my child accelerated?"

The short answer (in Pennsylvania) on how to "get" acceleration is this: As a Team you either rule out every other alternative proposed as being appropriate for the gifted child, so that the Team is left with acceleration; or the modifications made to the regular education curriculum for the gifted child are such that acceleration is the more cost effective option for the district. The long answer on how to "get" acceleration takes about two hours.

7) What seems to be the best way to inform parents about the options and alternatives out there for their gifted children?

The internet has been a tremendous help to parents seeking out information and sharing experiences. Initially, parents need to understand that there are two distinct areas to learn: 1) the gifted regulations which apply to them and 2) their child's giftedness.

Parents tend to spend a great deal of time learning about the nature of their child's giftedness, general issues involved in gifted education, and other facets of "Gifted" - they tend to not factor in the regulations, which provide the context in which all this information can be used.

Information about options such as cybercharter, charter schools, and home schooling can also be found on the internet. Sites such as www.HoagiesGifted.com provide a terrific summary of resources for parents looking to find out about all available resources including talent searches, gifted summer camps, and weekend gifted courses.

8) What kinds of things currently need to be done to better help parents of gifted kids and gifted kids themselves?

Parents need to appreciate what is at stake. If the parent does nothing, their child could spend the equivalent of 12 work weeks during the school year just sitting at their desk and watching other children learn. That's a cold, hard fact.

I developed the HEAT Worksheet - Half Equals A Third - to illustrate to Gifted IEP Team members, particularly parents, the critical need for present levels testing.

The HEAT Worksheet accounts for the material a child already knows going into a class, but also accounts for the child's rate of acquisition and their rate of retention. This factors in curriculum spiraling, review and repetition throughout the school day and school week. The result then is the net amount of time the student has available to engaged in learning new material in the coming year.

In practice, if a gifted child is given a pretest on the coming year's curriculum and they only know "half" the content in a subject, what does that mean? It means that, once excess spiraling, review and repetition that the gifted child does not need is accounted for, the gifted child will likely spend only one third of their time learning new material in the coming year.

In that one subject the gifted child will spend 60 out of a possible 180 hours in their next school year learning new material.That leaves 120 hours of time to account for in an educational plan. Put another way, once there is present levels testing data, the Gifted IEP Team will know that the teacher must differentiate two out of three days for that gifted child. The Team can then provide that teacher with the resources he or she needs to do that.

When you consider that HEAT Worksheet applies to all academic subjects, the total number of hours the gifted/talented child might spend not learning new material could total upwards of 400-500 hours per school year. Every school year.My goal is to help parents understand that there is a "cost of doing nothing". Those 400-500 hours of potential downtime need to be reduced to an amount more tolerable for the gifted child. That is, after all, the purpose of the Gifted IEP and gifted education in general.

For parents concerned about becoming adversarial with their district administrator, I ask them this question, the answer to which dictates a lot of what is possible when advocating: Whom would you choose as an adversary:a district administrator or a gifted teenager with poorly developed student skills and a bad attitude towards school living under your roof?

Fundamentally, regardless of the child's educational situation, I believe gifted kids benefit from their parents understanding what the student actually is going through in school. It is tough to ask a child to sit through three hours of lectures and reviews in a week when fifteen minutes was all that the child needed. One website, www.Sengifted.org , offers good advice for parents and gifted children on dealing with the social and emotional issues that come into play with giftedness.

9) What question have I neglected to ask?

What's the best way to keep focus on the issue?

At a big picture level, people involved in gifted education and advocacy sometimes forget that to 90% of the population the task of advocating for the needs of the gifted is on a par with advocating for the needs of the good looking. It's not, but there is a recurring need for those involved in this debate to address that popular, if misguided, mindset into account every time we engage in policy discussions with the district or legislators.

We understand that gifted children are real children, with distinct needs.

At the small picture level,people who are advocating on behalf a particular child tend to want to do two things at the same time. They want to advocate on behalf of their child, and all children within that group, be it their school, district, or state. That is admirable, but I too often see parents frustrated in their attempts to effect meaningful change for their child because they are, in essence, trying to "boil the ocean" and effect sweeping district change. I always advise parents to stay focused on their child until they get a specific change, and then address larger issues. But I also ask them to help as many other parents in their district as they can while they are advocating.

There is a seemingly overwhelming complexity to gifted education when you first look at it in all its manifestations. However gifted education at the field-level is, I've found, common-sense. At the student/district level there is an almost Copernican aspect to discussions about gifted education.

I have noticed that when the district is put at the center of the educational universe, the conversations and diagrams become complicated, counter-intuitive, and great effort is exerted to prove that the situation is as initially claimed. But when the gifted child is put at the center of the discussion, the issues become simple and common-sensical: What does the child know?What does he or she need next? When will he or she need it?

And, because gifted children are not simply academic machines, the last question: Will he or she have a positive experience?

All children are gifted, but some gifted children have educational needs which result from their being gifted. These needs will go unmet if not planned for appropriately.In the case of those children, it must be possible for small groups of concerned adults to identify these kids, and, once found, keep the conversations simple, efficient, and child-centered, creating for each child an educational plan which results in what everybody wants: a child who develops his or her student skills, achieves to his or her ability, and has a positive experience in the classroom.

To believe otherwise is to have given up.