Common Core interjects the idea of rigor into standards for all. So where do gifted students fit in this plan? If every student is meant to accomplish these high standards, are there higher standards for students whose IQ is off the charts, or who have been identified as twice exceptional (students with a disability but who are also gifted)?
According to the National Association of Gifted Children, there are three to five million gifted students in the U.S. What is being done for them and how will Common Core impact the gifted student population?
Common Core enthusiasts will say that through differentiation and universal learning (online), gifted students will get even more rigorous activities beyond the already demanding standards. The trouble is they are still pretty much the same standards.
Common Core devotees, who stand to profit greatly, will tell you that Common Core will fix the gifted issue in our schools. What will it mean for students hanging out on the far right of the bell curve? Well here are some problems to consider when it comes to Common Core and gifted students. And, of course, many of these problems face all students.
- First, most gifted students attend regular classes. Teachers might not focus on gifted students. They will concentrate instead on the students with problems who will drag scores down if they aren’t given a lot of drilling.
- Gifted students with inquisitive questions or quirky behavior might be considered a liability to the teacher with a large class and many demanding students. Or they might be considered nice students to have around. I have heard of gifted students who are sent to the library to tutor other students. While a little of this might be fine, gifted students should be working on their own school material.
- Many gifted students develop a deep interest in a particular subject. But students are being denied a well-rounded curriculum. With no exposure to a variety of subjects, and that special subject, gifted students miss out on important learning.
- Along with the above, we all know that the arts are gone in many poor schools. But how many elementary and middle school students are currently missing out on coursework like science? Many subjects have been eliminated by Common Core.
- Busy teachers might assume their gifted students will automatically do well on the tests. Surprisingly, gifted students might fool them and not do well. In fact, some gifted students will intentionally fudge the test. Never underestimate a gifted kid with an attitude.
- Most regular education teachers take little, if any, coursework on how to work with gifted children. Working with gifted students can be particularly overwhelming. A student with autism, who is also gifted, or a student who has both a learning disability and giftedness, might also present special challenges for the teacher trying to align everyone to Common Core-like material.
- Gifted students have unique needs. If those needs are not met, students might develop behavioral difficulties. Common Core does not really focus on gifted students and their sometimes complex characteristics.
Gifted programming has always left something to be desired. There has never been a set protocol throughout the country to really assist these students and address their unique needs. So is it any wonder many parents of gifted students look at Common Core and question its authenticity?
And from what I can see, Common Core doesn’t involve thinking outside the box, it is more about putting gifted children in a box and making them fit—a very little box indeed.
I welcome your criticism and comments.
I saw this all the time while I taught Common Core. Gifted students were used as peer tutors rather than being pushed to find their own limits. Research has, for years, said that gifted students learn best when surrounded by other gifted students. Every attempt I ever made to allow my gifted students to work together and push each other was criticized and stopped.
Common Core does little for gifted students because gifted students must be tested AT GRADE LEVEL. Common Core tests are NOT norm referenced. All questions are based on grade level standards. If your child has spent the year studying ABOVE grade level, being tested BELOW that level can cause very low test scores. Many gifted students fail criterion referenced tests. Additionally teachers are now evaluated on student growth. Students who are gifted are already near the top of the charts with very little room to grow. That lack of growth reflects poorly on their teachers evaluations and can cause the teachers to find themselves without a job.
Common Core only works for the middle kids…..and there aren’t many of those!!!
I agree with what you say, but this really stood out. What a misuse of testing. Thank you, Meg N
“Students who are gifted are already near the top of the charts with very little room to grow. That lack of growth reflects poorly on their teachers evaluations and can cause the teachers to find themselves without a job.”
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Throughout her elementary school testing years, my daughter was requested and even begged to slow down while taking tests. She was encouraged NOT to do her best at the beginning of the school year because the teacher needed to see an improvement. How is this helpful for the gifted child? We have not encountered this in Middle School, yet.
Report cards at the elementary level, the 1-5 system, which eventually became the 1-4 system, was/is a complete joke and are meaningless. She rarely received the ‘highest’ score of ‘4’, even if receiving high 90’s and 100’s on all exams, HW, projects, etc because we were told there isn’t any such thing as a perfect score. Again, thankfully, in middle school, they are still on the A, B, C, etc scale and we see a numerical grade on Home Access. If two children, one who is a 80-85% student, is receiving the same report card grades as the 90-95% student, how on earth is this feasible? Oh, yes, we were told it was to rid the students of competition and to level the playing field so there wouldn’t be hurt feelings. Pathetic! And then at the next turn we are told we must become highly competitive with higher performing children from across the globe. It doesn’t compute. We are not all ignorant and I am NOT buying any of it.
In TN, the students are sorted via tests into Tiers for RTI2. This means that the advanced students are given a period of “enrichment” while the struggling students are given remedial help. Theoretically this sounds good, but there isn’t enough staff to implement it properly.
For “enrichment”, the advanced students are often given busy-work and test prep materials while the teachers work with the “bubble” kids. “Bubble” kids are the ones who are on the cusp of being proficient, because if they can get their test scores up, it helps their school’s overall average of proficiency.
This is all a game. Teachers & administrators have learned to “game” the system, too.
What an insult to children TN Mom! I wrote a post for Living in Dialogue a while back about RTI and you verify what I said. What a mess! RTI hits a nerve with parents and teachers. “Bubble Kids” is a new one on me though! The system currently is a game. Finding problems early is a worthy idea, but I don’t think it needs to be done this way. Thank you for sharing how it divides children into groups that support more testing!
If you find some time
http://www.livingindialogue.com/response-intervention-excuse-deny-services-students-learning-disabilities/
An example of “gaming” the tests… My child is the APEX gifted program in middle school. Her APEX English teacher gives them a list of vocabulary words each Monday and they are given a test on Friday. However, the past couple of months, the Friday tests have included words that weren’t on the weekly list.
If a student gets an 86% or lower on this test, the teacher allows students to re-take the test for full credit. My child, who studies for this test and formerly got 95%-100% on the tests (which is an A), has lately been getting 88%-93% (which is a B). It bothers my child that her average for the class is a B. It bothers my child that if she scored lower than an 86% on the test or hadn’t answered the bonus questions on the test correctly, she could re-take the test, find out the words that weren’t on on the weekly list, and score an easy 100%.
My child’s solution? Bomb the test the first time. I think she’s brilliant. I told her she has my support to fail the test. Crazy, huh?
You are right that you child is brilliant for figuring out that strategy. But it is sad too. I wonder the teacher’s motive for adding extra words that the students don’t get to study. So much attention to testing. Games– you are right. Tricks too. It really is maddening. Thank you for sharing TN Mom!
I have 4 gifted children, although they are gifted in different areas. One excels at music, one at art, two at math, all at reading. They had a half-day program in the elementary school once a week for the gifted kids that was fantastic. They learned how to research and write papers in grade six, various lego logo activities, hands-on algebra, discussions and debates. It was fantastic.
In the urban school where I taught the kids had a whole day for gifted ed and it was wonderful for them. However, about the same time as NCLB was born, they eliminated the Gifted Programs, insisting that the teacher at their home school could give them enrichment. Uh, no. About the same time, we were told to spend the majority of our instructional effort on the bubble kids as described by TN Mom. I tried to make an effort to sit the gifted kids two to a table with some other smart kids who were not gifted. Seemed to work best They didn’t mind tutoring every once in a while, but really enjoyed being able to work together in reading and math. Middle and high school gifted education meant accelerated studies for three of my personal kids, which was fine. But the fourth one attended a different high school than the others and they offered the regular curriculum only, in a seminar. In fact, my daughter had to take Western Civ again in her freshman year even though she had had the same course in her gifted class in Middle School. Ugh. Common Core has just made things even worse for the gifted kids.
Congratulations for managing a household with so many gifted children! So all was pretty good until NCLB? Isn’t that something? NCLB really ushered in the heavy standardized testing. And it makes me mad when students have to retake courses with material they already learned. There is no reason why a school can’t be more flexible with scheduling. But this was all interesting to read. Thank you for sharing, Anne.
Rigor is NOT what gifted children need. Rigor is not the same as deeper, differentiated learning which gifted children need. Rigor just means more worksheets, more assignments, just MORE. More is not what any student needs. They may just need less, but better, more creative, deeper and more authentic. Sadly, “rigor” is what we get with this new standardized Common Core curriculum.
I love how you said it, very clearly: “Common Core doesn’t involve thinking outside the box, it is more about putting gifted children in a box and making them fit—a very little box indeed.” And that small box may already be half-filled with standardized tests, making it that much smaller.
Loved this post! Thank you!
Thank you, Celi. And I like your website for gifted parents crushingtallpoppies.com. and good luck with your new book due to come out soon.
The common core’s emphasis on the common assessment to measure student success demands teachers teach to the middle 3/5 of kids. The assumption is the top tier students will get it, and we are encourage to use them, as others have stated, as peer tutors. The ones in the lowest tier, well, I am reminded of something my husband’s first principal told him: don’t water a rock.
Two things stand out: one, the Common Core are written about two years above grade level. If taught at that level, only the gifted would thrive. We must, then, identify the ESSENTIAl Standards and teach the bejeebus out of them, hoping enough kids show growth to counter those whose skills remain stagnant.
Two, as one of those kids identified for enrichment before it was called enrichment, or GATE, the lone first and second grader among the 4th and 5th grade. Early reader. Very early reader, and very avid reader. In college, I often found my “group” the largest in Standard English Grammar, because I just got it, almost intuitively, having never diagrammed a sentence prior. While I didn’t mind explaining it in my own way to a few, I did not want the role of learning for myself and my classmates. I loathed being asked to peer tutor kids in my class–it put both of us in uncomfortable roles. I much preferred cross age tutoring with the kindergarten while in 5th grade, or at the elementary school as an 8th grader. Some highly intelligent students don’t mind showing and demonstrating. Others don’t want to work with a partner, because they learn best solo. I liked school, for the most part, all the way through. I would not like school, as structured today. I would hate it. Yet I love my job, and my alternative, at-risk student population on track to certification in the trades and local community college programs.
We stopped homogeneous grouping, or tracking, years ago, yet we now must assess our students on tests we had no hand in designing, which serve to track and pigeonhole them further, mostly to identify which schools should be closed or turned over to educcateers. Test scores correlate with poverty levels on EVERY STANDARDIZED TEST WE”VE GIVEN from ‘the onset of the CAHSEE and the STAR exams, to state EOCs and EOGs.
Thank you for sharing such interesting experiences. Your current teaching situation sounds well-planned, and it appears your students are on track for a job in the future! I also don’t like that tests and Common Core were created without much if any input from teachers.
I love that you wrote about gifted students whose short time with a teacher that knows how to work with them is being pushed to the side. Common Core will not assist them anymore than other students. I do not think that many educators understand what it means to be gifted just as my sister did not understand her son was gifted and failing language Arts. I wanted to share a comment made by a principal a few years ago. Her dream was to fill the school with gifted kids so the scores would go up. When she found out that is not how it works and they may need special accommodations to be successful she thought maybe that was not such a good idea. Our schools are full of kids who do not fit the mold they are trying to put them in. I love your article.
Thanks, Lisa! I love this, “Our schools are full of kids who do not fit the mold they are trying to put them in.” There is no such thing as cookie cutter kids!
I am in full agreement with the above article. My grandson is in the first grade and always functioned well above grade level. He was reading on 1st grade level before entering kindergarten. He was out of sight on math. They won’t even considering the gifted class in his school until end of second grade. They do use him to help other children. Although his test scores are A’s, he is losing his love for learning. When they keep doing A,B,C and 1,2,3 over and over and over again, it tends to get real boring. He reads at 2.7-3..5 grade level and in math he functions on 2-3rd grade level maybe even higher. He understands fractions, multiplication, division and can give change for any amount you give him. He already knows all of that and I’m afraid he is going to lose his love for learning. . He has the best teacher that a child could ever have as far as teaching to the child. But she is restricted as to how far she can go. It is so frustrating. I want him to continue to love learning. I don’t know the answer in getting rid of Common Core crap. It is just so in the box.
I’m sorry, Teresa. It doesn’t sound like Common Core is living up to its hype to differentiate. I hope the situation changes. In the meantime I’d head to the local library when you get time and let him have at it. I bet he knows what he is interested in, or he will find out! Thank you.
Common Core made clear from the beginning that it did not meet the needs of gifted students, and that was not a goal. The lack of understanding of the nature and needs of gifted children leads most teachers to assume that the “rigor” of CC is enough for all students, even gifted.
On the subject of gifted students tutoring, I have strong thoughts on the matter and so do gifted students. First, students don’t teach, they tell. They aren’t trained to instruct and can cause more confusion. Secondly, struggling students don’t want to be taught by gifted students, they just want the answers. A better scenario is to allow students in the class to share and model their reasoning collaboratively, with teacher monitoring and guiding. Lastly, it sets up an awkward dynamic between students, and gifted students worry about getting problems wrong and losing face. (Just like teachers!)
CC has it’s strengths and weaknesses, and the authors themselves recognize that gifted support is one of the weaknesses.
My 7th grade daughter is gifted in math and dyslexic so her reading isn’t the greatest. Thanks to Common Core, she is in the same math class as kids who got “D’s” in math last year. Needless to say, she is bored out of her mind. The school board said she could use that time to study advanced math but she’d still have to test at the 7th grade math level and, in order to earn an “A” in the class, also test well on her advanced math. In short, she’d have to do twice the work for the same grade. No thanks! She wasn’t going to play that game. The principal and school board are not motivated to give her challenging material at all. As a matter of fact, they love that she is a guaranteed “A” and good tester on the annual assessments. That’s why I refuse to allow her to take the assessment tests (PARCC). The school didn’t do anything to support her giftedness so they don’t get the reward of her good scores to improve their ratings.
The National Association for Gifted Children advocates for the inclusion of gifted education into the federal, state and local education policy. Which should not mean inclusion in the classroom in this millennial buzz-word way. To say that I am disappointed with inclusion would be a colossal understatement. We need tolerance, understanding, empathy, diversity in life, but not inclusion in this one-size-fits-all sense for the classroom.. But most of all, we need to truly pick, educate, and empower teachers! We cannot compare our classrooms to Finland but we can learn from their success: A recent PhD thesis from the University of Oslo found that Finland leaves teacher education policies to experts in the field while other less successful countries –Norway in the study– leave it to… politics, The complication in the US is that some of our “experts” are guilty of the very same biases they allegedly fight. We need to be bold, honest, and discerning for our kids. Gifted kids are out there, and they need our support too..