Educators now know that no student is gifted in all areas. “It used to be that a gifted kid was [seen as] someone who could do everything perfectly,” says Rich Weinfeld, executive director of the Weinfeld Education Group in Silver Spring. But the paradigm has shifted since Weinfeld first started teaching elementary school in 1975. “Now we look for the gifted abilities or strengths possessed by different learners.”
In fact, there may be dichotomies at play. For example, a student with off-the-charts computer mapping abilities may be an average reader with poor fine motor skills that result in illegible penmanship. The child who can do Algebra at age 10 may not have the emotional maturity to avoid a meltdown when she gets a problem wrong.
“Perfectionism is rampant among gifted kids,” says Wendy Cohen, who taught gifted students at K.W. Barrett Elementary for 20 years before retiring this past spring. “They believe that everything should come easily. So when something doesn’t, they believe that they’re not smart or they give up.”
In these instances it’s important for parents to model perseverence, Cohen says, and to send a message to their kids that it’s okay to make mistakes.
Today’s pedagogy also recognizes that giftedness can come hand-in-hand with learning disabilities or developmental disorders—a combination that’s referred to in academic and clinical circles as “twice-exceptional” (2e).
“There’s this myth that I have a classroom filled with well-behaved, rule-following children,” says Green, the K-2 enrichment coordinator for Falls Church City Public Schools. “But if that’s what my classroom looks like, I’m not doing it right. A lot of times [students] have odd obsessions and strange behaviors that go along with their gift. Some may or may not be on the autism spectrum or have other special needs. Part of what I do is to serve these kids who really need a place where they can be themselves.”
Green says gifted children may have difficulty prioritizing their work, in that they tend to fixate on topics they find interesting and neglect what seems boring. That’s the case for Nathan*, a sixth-grader at Haycock Elementary this fall. He was identified as gifted early on, but he also has an executive-functioning challenge that makes him completely disorganized, like an absentminded professor. “He’s bright, but he’s just so spacey,” says his mom. “It’s exhausting. Sometimes I tell him, ‘I’m tired of being your frontal lobe.’”
Tim*, an Arlington eighth-grader, has always been an exceptional reader. As an elementary school student he could draw clever analogies, make mature references and hold sophisticated literary conversations with adults. But he was overwhelmed by any assignment that required him to write.
“He wanted to read Shakespeare, but he literally had a hard time writing a sentence,” says his mom. “It was excruciating for him to put pen to paper.” After years of struggling, Tim was diagnosed with dysgraphia, a learning disability that makes the physical task of holding a pen and writing down thoughts difficult. He’s since explored alternative writing strategies, such as dictation, in an attempt to overcome those hurdles.
Being the parent of a gifted child isn’t all roses. Some parents say it can be isolating and tough to find empathy and support among their peers. “It’s easy to talk to people about my daughter, who has dyslexia. No one balks at that,” says a Falls Church mom. “But it’s hard to talk to people about my son who’s gifted. They roll their eyes, even though his struggles are just as real as hers.”
Any utterance of the word “gifted” is perceived as a humble brag, agrees an exasperated Arlington mother. “My mom friends will talk all day about the girl drama at school or which teacher did what…but no one dares bring up the subject of what’s going on in the gifted services program.”
Frustrated by this taboo, Beth Dowd, whose son attends Thomas Jefferson Middle School, created the Arlington Gifted Google listserv (now 350 members strong) as a place where area parents can post questions and vent their frustrations. “There’s an avalanche of information about gifted education online, but very little of it is local,” explains Dowd, who co-chairs APS’s parent-run Gifted Services Advisory Committee (GSAC). “I wanted a place where Arlington parents could ask for advice and talk openly about parenting gifted kids without being judged.”
Josh Turner, also a co-chair of the GSAC for the past four years (his term ended this year), says that gifted instruction is often viewed as a luxury or an extravagance. “It’s easy to look at the gifted label as an unadulterated good. People assume you’re smart, capable and have a bright future,” says Turner, whose daughter is in the gifted program at Oakridge Elementary. But gifted kids, like all kids, need to be engaged. “If you don’t adjust to that you can lose them.”
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Navigating the local options for gifted students can be confounding. In Fairfax County elementary schools, accelerated learners (students who are rated as “Level 4” based on their CogAT scores in second grade) are grouped together in specialized classrooms—or in some cases, entirely separate “center” schools—that teach an advanced (AAP) curriculum. Some critics see this segregated model as a form of intellectual elitism. Supporters say it’s no different from cherry-picking the most talented athletes to play travel sports.
In Arlington, the delivery models for gifted instruction can vary from one school to the next—a reality that frustrates many parents and educators. Says one APS elementary school resource teacher: “Each school seems to be its own fiefdom, and they all seem to delight in their own specialness.”
Some APS schools offer weekly small-group pull-out sessions in which gifted kids leave their regular classrooms and meet with the school RTG (resource teacher for the gifted) for 45 minutes to explore a topic in greater depth, whether that means reading a novel and dissecting its themes with supplemental research, or tackling logic puzzles involving complicated math. Some parents of gifted students say it’s the best 45 minutes of their kid’s week.
The problem, says APS gifted services supervisor McCullough, is that gifted children aren’t just gifted for 45-minute stints: “Their [regular] teachers need to know how to teach to their ability” on a daily basis.
That’s why McCullough and others have been advocating for more Arlington schools to adopt a “push-in” model, whereby the RTGs co-plan lessons with classroom teachers to offer enriched curriculum in the classroom setting. This approach involves “scaffolding” students who need help catching up, she explains, while simultaneously accelerating those who are ready to move forward.
Kevin Trainor, an RTG who’s worked with fellow teachers to introduce a push-in model at McKinley Elementary, explains the rationale: “It doesn’t make sense for me to be the only one who can address our gifted students’ needs. The teachers participated in the training, we collaborated on the lesson plans, and now there are close to 50 kids in grade 3 alone who are getting an advanced math curriculum. When we stopped worrying about identifying who’s gifted, we were able to agree on who needs harder math more easily.”
In other words, he says, taking the “gifted” label out of the equation allowed teachers to better focus on individual students’ needs.
Thomas Cooper*, whose son is a gifted student at McKinley, sees the push-in approach as a win-win that exposes a larger section of the school population to enriched curriculum. “[My son] needs to learn how to function in the real world,” he says. “That means being with kids who have all sorts of gifts, talents and experiences. It also means working through tasks he might find boring.”
Several Arlington schools now use a combination of pull-out and push-in lessons. So do Falls Church City public schools like Thomas Jefferson Elementary, where Patrick Vennebush’s 9-year-old twins, Alex and Eli, are entering fourth grade.
Vennebush, who writes math textbooks for a living, says the level of rigor has been calibrated just right for his boys. “We really like that they get a lot of extra puzzles and challenges through their enrichment classes,” he says. “They’re not getting pushed through the curriculum faster; they’re getting an enriched look at the math that’s on their level.”
Still, some school officials worry privately that the level of customization needed to make the push-in scenario a success—particularly in the face of growing class sizes—isn’t feasible or sustainable.
“Parents are looking for a private-school education in a public school setting, and we’re just not equipped to provide that,” says one APS administrator.
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Bo Davis lived in Arlington for more than 20 years, but last year he and his wife moved their family to Falls Church. Their three kids now attend Haycock Elementary, a Level 4 AAP “center” school for gifted students that’s part of the Fairfax County public school system. “I was unhappy with the way gifted services were being implemented at APS,” Davis says. “I am a firm believer that if kids are not challenged in school, they’ll get turned off to it.
“While APS is focusing on closing the achievement gap—making sure no kid gets left behind—they’ve dropped the ball on the kids who are on the high end of the spectrum,” Davis contends. “This isn’t something we did lightly. But in the span of four weeks, my younger son [now a rising fourth-grader] went through the same math curriculum that it took our old school [in Arlington] a year to teach.”
Fairfax County’s AAP framework does have its drawbacks. Detractors note that many AAP classes assign more than 30 students to a single teacher. Kids attending AAP “center” schools often have to be bused far away from their neighborhoods and social circles. The “center school” concept has also been criticized for eliminating intellectual diversity in neighborhood schools as the smartest kids are siphoned off and sent elsewhere.
Which is partly why FCPS, in recent years, has implemented a “Local Level 4” system, whereby certain neighborhood schools now offer the AAP curriculum to qualified students inhouse. Chesterbrook Elementary in McLean is one such school.
“We are a school-based [AAP] center, which means we take only kids from our geographic area,” explains Chesterbrook’s principal, Bob Fuqua. “Our homerooms are heterogeneously grouped, but we have at least one Level 4 class for each of the core subjects in grades 3 through 6.”
In the future, Arlington’s approach to gifted instruction could end up looking a lot more like Fairfax County’s if a March 2016 recommendation to the Arlington County School Board gains any traction.
“Given the complex demands placed on teachers in today’s classrooms, perhaps it is time APS considered a different model for delivery of gifted services,” APS’s Gifted Services Advisory Committee (GSAC) stated in a memorandum to the school board. “Outside of a handful of select elementary schools, GSAC sees no evidence of consistent delivery of gifted services. With so much in flux given the current capacity crunch, perhaps the time is right to consider gifted centers. Another alternative would be to borrow an idea from Fairfax County’s Advanced Academics model and implement a ‘school within a school’ concept—similar to their [Level 4 system].”
What happens after elementary school? Local middle and high schools continue to provide various forms of accelerated instruction, including honors, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes. But some gifted students and their families feel the offerings fall short, even in public schools that are ranked among the best in the nation. That’s why Parker Walsh opted for a year of homeschooling in lieu of attending Williamsburg Middle School last year. “He was doing all his learning outside of the classroom, so what was he going to school for?” his mom says.
Parker spent his seventh-grade year taking online classes from various gifted resources and major universities, but the experience wasn’t all positive. While he felt challenged academically, he says he missed having daily interaction with his peers. This fall he’ll be attending BASIS, an independent school in McLean where the experimental curriculum caters to each student’s individual needs, regardless of age or grade level.
Joining him at BASIS is Taylor*, a former Swanson Middle School student whose 99.9th percentile IQ score qualified him to become a Davidson Scholar.
Despite his quantifiable genius, “[Taylor] is your classic underachiever,” his mom confides. “He’s compliant. He does everything that’s asked of him, but nothing more. And he’s not mature enough to understand that that attitude is contributing to his unhappiness.” Her hope is that a small private school will challenge her son in ways that public school could not. “I think Swanson’s a great school,” she says, “but when it comes to my kid, his needs aren’t being met.”
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What does “gifted” mean, how is it manifested and which academic setting is best for the advanced student? In the end, these are pretty subjective questions.
“Whether or not your child is identified for gifted services is not the be all, end all, says Carol Horn, the AAP coordinator for grades K-12 in Fairfax County. “It’s more important to do what’s best for your child. I’m not telling parents whether or not their child is gifted. I’m saying, ‘Let’s find the level of service that’s best.’ That’s part of why I label the service rather than the child.
“Giftedness in children is potential,” Horn adds, paraphrasing the philosophy of A. Harry Passow, whose pioneering research in the 1950s and ’60s changed the field of gifted education. “Whether or not that potential is developed depends on the match between the child and the type of nurturance that’s provided.”
On the subject of nurturance, Brighton, the UVA researcher, points out that impressions of intelligence can be deceiving. Kids who arrive in kindergarten knowing their ABCs may have gotten a head start, but that doesn’t mean they’re gifted. Conversely, one can’t assume that kids who aren’t reciting the alphabet at age 5 are not gifted. “Children from impoverished backgrounds…come to their first formal schooling experience having been exposed to 30 million fewer words than their privileged peers,” Brighton noted in UVAToday. “And sometimes a delay is just part of the developmental process. Albert Einstein was 4 years old before he spoke and age 7 before he could read.”
A parent’s job, no doubt, is to be his or her child’s best advocate. Sometimes that means petitioning a school, seeking outside testing or considering instructional alternatives when a student seems academically stagnant.
At the same time, experts caution parents to remember the endgame and what’s ultimately at stake. “Some parents invest in the success of their children in ways that crush their children out of the equation,” says Velkoff, the psychologist. “The gifted label can become a badge [of honor] for the parents. But sooner or later, the kids know that they are becoming success surrogates for their parents, which leads to an unbalanced dance. Rather than focusing on their talents and passions, they focus on getting adult accolades.”
Rebecca White*, whose son, Jason, struggled as a gifted student, offers her own perspective in hindsight. “I still don’t know whether or not we made the right decision,” she says. “Knowing [what I know now], I probably wouldn’t have put [Jason] in GT and put those pressures on an already high-strung kid. Maybe he wouldn’t have been in crisis so much of the time. I would rather have had him happy.”
Helpful Resources
Arlington Public Schools Gifted Services
www.apsva.us/gifted-services
Arlington Gifted Google Listserv
groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/arlingtongifted
Cognitive Assessment at George Mason University
cap.gmu.edu
Davidson Institute for Talent Development
www.davidsongifted.org
Fairfax County Association for the Gifted
www.fcag.org
Fairfax County Public Schools Advanced Academic Programs
www.fcps.edu/is/aap
Falls Church City Public Schools Academic and Creative Endeavors Program (search site using keyword “ACE”)
www.fccps.org
Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth
cty.jhu.edu
National Association for Gifted Children
www.nagc.org
Summer Institute for the Gifted
www.giftedstudy.org
Getting In
Northern Virginia public schools offer different forms of gifted instruction, but the process for identifying eligible students is fairly similar from one school district to the next. A screening test is usually administered to all students in a particular grade to identify those who might benefit from an accelerated curriculum. Students may also be recommended for gifted services by a teacher, parent, community member (such as a coach or music instructor) or even by the student himself. This starts the formal process of evaluation by the school and its gifted resources staff.
During the evaluation, data such as test scores from the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT), the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) and the Stanford-Binet intelligence test (now used by Falls Church City Public Schools) are considered, along with classroom work samples and feedback from parents and teachers in the form of behavioral questionnaires.
While a student may be identified as gifted at any age, many schools push to have kids identified by the time they’re in third grade. If a teacher suspects giftedness as early as kindergarten, the school might use an individually administered test, such as the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (KBIT), as a baseline for evaluation. Fairfax County Public Schools publishes a timeline that promises a three-month turnaround on gifted assessments, but in Arlington some APS parents have reported waiting up to a year for a verdict on their child’s status.
Parents may also opt to have their child privately tested and submit those results to their school for consideration. A basic IQ test usually takes a little less than two hours and runs about $350, according to Anita Auerbach, founder and director of Commonwealth Psychological Associates in McLean, whereas a full evaluation (which may be designed to identify gifted areas as well as potential learning disabilities) involves two half-days of testing, a complete history from parents and a clinical interview with the child, producing nearly 200 pages of data and doctor’s evaluations. Cost: about $3,000.
Adrienne Wichard-Edds has previously written about clinical anxiety, running culture and the psychology of giving for Arlington Magazine.