An open enrollment gifted program.

Can a program be successful if it maintains high academic standards for a broad spectrum of a school's population? What would it look like? Schools that enroll students of diverse backgrounds and skills have difficulty providing equal opportunity to rigorous and challenging curriculum. Gifted programs have been standard bearers for rigorous and challenging curricula but they remain virtually unavailable to the general school population. Thus, we find schools and gifted programs struggling from opposite ends to provide curriculum based on both equity and excellence. This short descriptive piece will highlight the efforts of one school to bridge the gap between equity and excellence.

About 15 years ago, the Kahuku High and Intermediate School (grades 7-12), situated in a former plantation village on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawai'i, followed the common means of screening for its gifted program and enrolled fewer than 100 students; less than 7% of the school population. Because of difficulties involved in accurately screening incoming seventh graders from six feeder schools and a shift in philosophy to a more inclusive program, as well as a developmental approach to gifted education, the decision was made in the 1990-1991 school year to abolish any exclusive means of screening for the next incoming group of seventh graders.

For the 1991-1992 school year, the gifted program automatically enrolled all students who were in sixth-grade gifted programs. All other students recommended by any sixth grade teacher were enrolled. Any parent could enroll a child by simply requesting consideration. In addition, the program coordinator enrolled any other incoming student with Stanford Achievement Test scores of stanine 6 (9 is the highest score) in reading or language. Finally, a seventh-grade teacher could nominate students after observing them early in the school year.

By 1994, the Kahuku gifted program enrollment had swelled to nearly 500 students, representing over 27% of the 1,800 total school enrollment. By comparison, Kahuku's closest neighboring school, located in a more suburban and middle class area, enrolled about 130 students, representing less than 7% of the student body. The number of classes in the program increased dramatically from four in 1984 to 40 in 1994. As a result, Advanced Placement classes increased from two in 1984 to nine in 1994, while pass rates remained above the national average in the exams for American History, American Government, English Literature, and English Composition; classes in which the great majority of students chose to enroll. This occurred even while scores on the Otis Lennon School Ability Test, administered to all students in the program, broadened to include an increased number and percentage of scores in stanines four to seven.

Most importantly, open enrollment led directly to a significant increase in the number and percentage of native Hawaiian and other Polynesian (primarily Samoan and Tongan) students enrolled in the gifted program. Nearly half of the Polynesian students enrolled in the program in 1992 were admitted through open enrollment. From available information, Caucasian students had constituted more than half the enrollment of the program in the 1980s and nearly half in the early 90s, although they comprised less than one fourth of the enrollment in the school. By 1994, Caucasian students made up only about 31% of the program (even while the actual number of Caucasian students showed a small increase) compared to almost 44% for the combined Polynesian group. While the Caucasian group was still overrepresented and the Polynesian group still underrepresented, the Polynesian students began to outnumber the Caucasian students (126 to 90) that year. Students of native Hawaiian ancestry (31) who would graduate in 1996 through the program equaled the number of Caucasian students. To this could be added 21 students of other Polynesian ancestry and 9 of Filipino ancestry, thus creating a large majority by groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in Hawai'i's gifted programs.

The numbers can provide evidence of the program's goal of equity but rigor of the program would be difficult to persuasively describe in this short piece. Positive Advanced Placement scores, a disproportionately large number of academic competitions and awards won by students, an impressive percentage of students going on to 4-year universities, and survey results of students attesting to the rigor of the curriculum are available upon request. The following anecdote helps to capture the nature of the program. A student of native Hawaiian ancestry who scored below average on the Otis Lennon and Stanford Achievement tests, struggled to maintain a C in the Advanced Placement History class during his senior year and then scored a 1 (out of 5) on the exam, the lowest score possible. During one of his frequent visits back to the Kahuku campus after enrolling in college, he remarked to his AP teacher that he was taking an American history course, regularly scored the highest in the class on exams and was especially proud that the other students considered him the "nerd" of the class.

In the vein of the "rising tide lifts all boats," enrollment in the program, by traditionally underrepresented and underachieving groups at Kahuku High and Intermediate School, has created an equitable opportunity for students to get an excellent education. Moreover, the phenomenal success of the program and its students has brought prestige to a school that 15 years ago was known as anything but academic. The school now has a statewide reputation for producing outstanding students who each year garner local and national honors that far exceed expectations for a school of its socioeconomic and ethnic make-up.

Allen Awaya is currently an assistant professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Previously, he taught for 20 years in Hawai'i public schools, the last 10 at Kahuku High and Intermediate School where he coordinated the gifted and talented program and helped develop and institute the open enrollment policy. His interests lie in the social context of education in Hawai'i and the Pacific. Besides writing about gifted and talented issues, he has written about student life in the early years of the College of Hawai'i (1907-1919) and about cultural issues in American Samoa's schools.