Inside today's classrooms: teacher voices on no child left behind and the education of gifted children.

Since the implementation of No Child Left Behind, I have gathered worrisome anecdotes from undergraduate student teachers, college supervisors, Master of Arts in Teaching elementary-school interns, and clinical liaisons on the reality of gifted education in today's elementary and secondary schools. Echoes of the identified issues of prominent educators come to the surface. For example, the "focus [is] on proficiency rather than academic growth" (Tomlinson, 2002, p. 36); "many teachers have put aside their curricula in favor of preparing their students to take ... 'high stakes tests' ... [which] have to be placed at a fairly basic conceptual level" (Gallagher, 2004, p. 121); and "the needs of gifted students are even more ignored or brushed off than they have been before" (Gallagher, p. 122). It seems appropriate then, in light of the popularity of the "reality" shows that seem to abound, to check with current educators to see what is actually happening from their vantage points. In this investigation, each respondent was identified as an excellent teacher of gifted children by their school/district administrators and/or by parents whose children were taught by them.

I set out to obtain response to a series of questions (Appendix A) from 10 teachers who work in four school districts in Colorado and who teach in a variety of settings, from "low-performing" schools to "high-performing" settings, from poverty to affluence, from elementary to middle school, and from perspectives as specialists in gifted education to those of "regular" classroom teachers and to experienced teachers on special assignment. Of the group, one teacher is a district supervisor of K-12 gifted education; two serve as gifted resource teachers; two teach in an International Baccalaureate (IB) middle school and have received specialized IB training; one is a K-6 foreign-language teacher recommended as outstanding by the district's assistant superintendent; one recently was the State's Elementary Drama Teacher of the Year; one was her district's Elementary Teacher of the Year; and two are literacy specialists/instructional coaches. The four districts that these teachers represent have a total population of 65,847 students, of which 4,401 have been identified as gifted. The respondents, whose experience in teaching spans 5 to 34 years, received the survey at a meeting in May, 2004, and replied over the month that followed with written candor. Confidentiality was offered, and more than half requested that neither their name nor school district be identified. Based on the desire for confidentiality, I honored it for all respondents, having concluded that the high stakes of today's teaching environment refer not only to test scores, but to teachers' professional welfare.

Findings

An initial issue for consideration was the overall effect of NCLB on the teachers' school, class, and/or district. Each answer below originated from a teacher in a different district:

1. "The gifted children who were ignored or overlooked before are now even more so."

2. "We're constantly being told that it is most important to bring our low-scoring children up on standardized tests (i.e., the Colorado Student Assessment Program, hereafter referred to as CSAP, which is the basis for 'scoring' schools and reporting to the federal government), and to bring proficient students to advanced. In many schools, curricula focus on reading, writing, and math only; children are learning to 'do' the CSAP, not learn for life!"

3. "More time is devoted to test preparation, unfortunately. Teachers will choose to keep their children for test preparation activities, thus canceling Talented and Gifted (TAG) classes. It is frowned upon (by the District) to remove TAG students during test preparation in regular classrooms." As of Summer 2005, the speaker reported that the situation continues to worsen, reporting that she is required to tutor and proctor for exams to the degree that she "hadn't seen her TAG children in months" during the 2004-05 academic year.

4. "I have observed little or no significant change, save money which is spent abundantly and perhaps disproportionally on high needs students."

While one might hypothesize that the most problematic of these statements on the effect of NCLB on gifted education came from educators in settings where scores are low and extreme effort is underway to raise them, the fact is that they originated from those teaching in the schools/districts with high scores. As reported by the teachers, fear of less success or lower scores than have been reported previously results in continued emphasis on the relatively small percentage of students who score less than proficient at the expense of the gifted students in the population. As noted by Gallagher (2005), "To say that we want educational excellence for ... talented students in no way suggests that only they should receive an excellent education. There should be educational excellence for all ... regardless of ability level or motivation" (p. 32).

From these responses, it is possible to ponder solutions to the plight of teachers and gifted students in these settings. Professional development for teachers who work with gifted children in regular classrooms might enable them to both identify such students more successfully and respond to their needs in effective ways. In none of the districts was professional development on gifted education mandatory; opportunities were reported to exist on occasion, albeit sometimes not recently, or to be available only for TAG specialists. Issues, though, arise even if training is available. In one district, a teacher reported that if such professional development opportunities were offered (to her knowledge, they weren't), they were not "promoted." As she indicated, "It's a shame, too, because I teach at a school with a high number of 'gifted' and high-achieving students, yet we are being told--more and more--to concentrate on bringing up those lower students." In yet another district, a teacher reported that while some training is offered, it's not "ongoing." In a high turnover profession, with 50% of teachers leaving the profession in the first 5 years (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2003), sporadic professional development is problematic in effect. Then there is the environment in which teaching currently operates. High stakes evoke high stress so that, as one respondent reported, "I see teachers sometimes take the easy way out ... that it is easier to teach one lesson, whole group, rather than plan for the management and instruction of different levels within one class."

One oft-recommended component of professional development for teachers of gifted children and others as well is differentiation so as to better meet the needs of the students. As speculated by Sanders and Rivers (1996), regardless of socioeconomic factors, "the higher the achievement level, the less the growth a student was likely to have" attributed to "a lack of opportunity for high-scoring students to proceed at their own pace, lack of challenging materials, lack of accelerated course offerings, and concentration of instruction on the average or below-average student" (DeLacy, 2004, p. 40). According to respondents, with regard to differentiated instruction, they reported a range from no evidence of it at all to its implementation as a "given expectation" in one school. Questions then arose as to the nature of existing differentiation. One teacher expressed "fear that most of the differentiation is happening at the low end and often, gifted children are left to work independently." She continued, "It seems that differentiation of instruction and 'preparing children' for the state examinations are directly opposed to one another since CSAPs do not allow for any diverse or creative thinking, but rather for one type of answer." Another respondent reported that "regular classroom teachers ... are often quite keen on collaborating to differentiate instruction. However, movement (to higher test scores) of underperforming students takes precedent. Basic differentiation happens, but I (the respondent) question if it adequately meets the needs of gifted students as evidenced by their stagnated growth on state and district assessments." This does raise questions about Gallagher's (2004) assumption that high-proficiency students will not regress when effort is made to reduce "the gap between low-proficiency ... and high-proficiency groups" over time (p. 121). In yet another district, a respondent reported that while teachers were helped to recognize the characteristics of gifted students through professional development, "the necessary training to differentiate for those students" was nonexistent.

Teachers were also asked to estimate the time and energy spent by regular classroom teachers in teaching reading, writing, and mathematics, which are the areas currently tested by the CSAPs. By averaging their responses, the estimate was that children who score unsatisfactory now receive 24% of instructional attention, partially proficient scorers receive 39%, proficient students account for 26%, and advanced children receive 11% of teaching. While these figures are only estimates from this corps of experienced teachers, they certainly are congruent with the concerns expressed by Sanders (Sanders & Rivers, 1996), and help account for the alarming observations offered.

Based on the responses and concerns reported here, the question of accountability for the education of gifted children in the current politicized educational environment arises. Education remains a major issue for the electorate, yet respondents reported that parents do not know how NCLB affects schools, let alone gifted children. As one teacher indicated, "Only the most resourceful parents are aware of the implications of NCLB on the qualitatively different education their children need." While teachers indicated that parents need both information on NCLB and education about how to use it, one teacher cautioned that today's educators "must tip toe around the issues lest we incur the wrath of the government, i.e., the holder of the purse strings." For instance, consider the remarks of Secretary of Education Spellings at the Summer 2005 meeting of the American Federation of Teachers. While the Secretary indicated the "need to round out the (NCLB) system more," her focus was on the possible expansion of student testing (as cited in Janofsky, 2005, p. 11). If instead, or in addition, NCLB is also linked to how well we prepare our most able students to compete in a world economy, as suggested by DeLacy (2004), then Secretary Spellings and others who wish to provide leadership and vision for the future should take notice (p. 40).

To this end, I asked teachers what message they would give to Congress if they could testify before it. Based on my own experience in Washington as a former member of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Combined Governmental Relations Committee, I asked teachers to be brief given the multitude of pressing issues considered by our legislators and the limited time they can devote to education. Accordingly, teacher voices rose to make the following statements:

1. "Three million gifted and talented students are currently our nation's most under served and underfunded human resource (Grey, 2004). Programs across the country that provide qualitatively different educational needs for these students are evaporating like water in a desert. Are these programs for high-ability students just an educational mirage? Is all the lip service we hear, caring about disenfranchised groups, just smoke and mirrors? I would be a proponent of NCLB if it were going to provide extraordinary intervention, so that we could impact the academic and creative minds of the future. Sadly, reality has shown that this is a punitive bill that diminishes the capacity of public education to provide for its best and brightest students."

2. "Face it--these gifted students are our future leaders, and if we don't start giving them at least equal time and meet their needs, we will be in a sad state. I have known extremely gifted and motivated children in elementary school who become bored and disenfranchised in middle/high school and who are now dropouts of society (one is currently living in his car!).... Gifted children at the elementary level now take a back seat to the unsatisfactory and partially proficient students. Bottom line--how sad it is that education in general has come to be defined in terms of test scores, that creative thought has been allowed to diminish, and that talented teachers are becoming nothing more than statisticians 'teaching to the test.'"

3. "A good teacher 'leaves' no child behind. If teachers are fortunate enough to work in a district that values the gifted learner, they are fortunate indeed. As the focus shifts in education to the test scores of unsatisfactory achievers or partially proficient students, it is imperative that our advanced students receive appropriate instruction as well. NCLB must apply equally to all learners for this complex, multifaceted, and unfunded piece of legislation to be viable long term. While we are ensuring that each child makes adequate yearly progress, we should not lose sight of the fact that for a gifted child, that could mean 2 or more years' growth in the same time frame. The gifted child must be guaranteed the opportunity to learn because to do less than our best would be an amazing disservice."

4. "Every child deserves to have his/her needs met and every child deserves to be taught including the gifted ones. We must continue to fund programs where these students can participate in in-depth studies at a pace commensurate with their abilities. Trained instructors are key to the success of these programs. Tomorrow is dawning and these students will be the honored ones, the ones from whom we will learn. They deserve our best, nothing more, nothing less, and absolutely nothing else. Our future depends on them."

5. "Stop placing our children in cookie-cutter categories. Educate a generation of teachers well-versed in differentiation. Create classrooms that give all children the chance to excel in some area."

6. "No Child Left Behind legislation assumes by virtue of its name that children are left behind. Good teachers don't leave children behind. One of my greatest concerns for this legislation is that students are labeled unnecessarily early. Teachers have benchmarks for student learning but student learning is based on so many factors not related to school.... Children are not products coming off an assembly line. They develop at their own pace. This brings me to gifted education. NCLB focuses on the student who is not achieving. The focus should be on all students, including the gifted. Education in general should include all students. This takes training. Great staff development takes money. Money coming into the district needs to get close to children and be used for staff development and appropriate/differentiated curriculum."

7. "Gifted children are the future thinkers and innovators of our country. If we continue to ignore this population in the schools, we will soon be outsourcing all jobs except menial ones from this country!"

While several teachers indicated that they were not sure how to address legislators, one teacher responded quite differently as to what she would do in this regard: "I would probably have them (the legislators) read Ayn Rand and write a three-page essay in support of TAG education or why they would not support her position. Of course, the legislators (not their writers nor campaign managers) should follow the appropriate protocol that at least our fifth-grade students must follow to score advanced on our state test!"

With their observations, all of the teachers felt that it is extremely important that preservice teachers receive some experience and education with gifted students. To that end, S.493/H.R. 1156 (NAGC, n.d.) proposed to amend the Higher Education Act and endorsed by the National Association for Gifted Children, could respond to the issue of preservice preparedness by "encouraging states and teacher preparation programs to improve the knowledge new teachers develop, through coursework and student teaching opportunities, about the unique educational needs of gifted and talented students" (Green, 2005). These proposals have been referred to appropriate committees for consideration.

Beyond the possibility of improving the education of gifted students by attention to teachers at the preservice level, respondents were asked their opinion (under the current conditions on which they reported) of the future of gifted education nationally. Choices ranged from "very optimistic that it will improve in the near future to truly meet the needs of gifted children" to "very pessimistic that it will worsen in the near future so that fewer gifted children will have their educational needs met." Fifty percent of the teachers responded that they are "somewhat pessimistic that gifted education will worsen in the near future so that fewer gifted children will have their educational needs met." Thirty percent viewed the future as maintaining "the status quo" (whatever it may be), and 20% who were middle-school teachers in a high-achieving district said they were "somewhat optimistic that it will improve in the near future to truly meet the needs of gifted children."

Perhaps what the teachers in this study offer is insight into the practices that have evolved since the passage of NCLB. Pragmatists might argue that those of us who are concerned about the future of gifted education consider how to "coexist with legislation that has the power to thwart as well as enhance" the education of gifted children (Kaplan, 2004, p. 125). Others might argue that, according to the National Association for Gifted Children, since 17 states had no money set aside for gifted education in 2003, they might wonder how the concept of "coexistence" applies. In any event, regardless of perspective and politics, I maintain that agreement needs to emerge that identifies the nation's gifted children as its most valued and currently endangered resource. There is the obvious need for homeland security that emerged on September 11th, and there is the less obvious need to recognize that future security will depend on the dynamic leadership, inventions, cures, and achievements of our gifted children. According to DeLacy (2004), "There is overwhelming evidence that gifted students do not succeed on their own" (p. 40). Therefore, I believe that the voices of teachers gathered in this survey articulate a need to revise NCLB to make "adequate yearly progress" the goal for all children, to support a national effort to energize public education so that it provides teachers and students alike with the resources and education to reach their highest effectiveness and potential respectively, and to conclude that delay in this regard is not in the national or individual best interest.

Appendix

No Child Left Behind Survey Of GT Teachers

Name: --

In earlier correspondence with a district gifted supervisor, I expressed concern about the effect of No Child Left Behind on the education of gifted children. I have since read similar concern expressed by Carol Tomlinson, Past President of the NAGC. I'd like your help in possibly writing something on the issue. Please respond to the following questions from your perspective. I'd be happy to keep your input confidential or, if you are willing to be identified, I need to know as well.

1. Your "official" professional title: --

2. Do you want your response to benefit from confidentiality (no name or district mentioned)? Yes -- No --

3. From your perspective, how has NCLB affected gifted children in your school, class, and/or district?

4. From your perspective, do "regular" classroom teachers in your district and/or school differentiate instruction to adequately meet the needs of gifted children? What is your evidence?

5. Have "regular" teachers received professional development in meeting the needs of gifted children in their classrooms? If so, please describe. If so, is such "training" mandatory for all regular classroom teachers?

6. From your vantage point, what percent of teacher time/energy is currently spent by regular teachers in teaching reading, math, and writing to the following learners?

Unsatisfactory achievers: --

Partially proficient: --

Proficient: --

Advanced:--

Clue: The above should add up to 100%!!

7. How is adequate yearly progress measured for gifted children in your class, school, and/or district? How is it reported? To whom?

8. The latest poll on NCLB indicates that the more voters know about the legislation, the less supportive they are of it. Do you believe or know if the parents of gifted children in your school have been provided with information on NCLB and on how it impacts their children?

9. As a result of NCLB, how do you perceive the future of gifted education nationally? (Check the best descriptor)

Very optimistic that it will improve in the near future to truly meet the needs of gifted children: --

Somewhat optimistic that it will improve in the near future to truly meet the needs of gifted children: --

The status quo (whatever it may be) will continue in the near future: --

Somewhat pessimistic that it will worsen in the near future so that fewer gifted children will have their educational needs met: --

Very pessimistic that it will worsen in the near future so that fewer gifted children will have their educational needs met: --

10. Given NCLB, how important is it to include attention in preservice teacher education to gifted children?

Very important: --

Important: --

Somewhat important: --

Minimally important: --

Not important: --

11. If you could "testify" before Congress (NCLB is President Bush's educational platform, but the bill received bipartisan support when approved by Congress), what message would you give re: the future of gifted education in this country? Why? (Note: my experience in Washington is that legislators have a very short attention span, so brevity must be the soul of your wit!)

12. If I put together something on this subject for an outside entity (journal or whatever), would you like a copy? Yes -- No --

If yes, where should I send it:

Thanks for your cooperation. Please mail your response to me in the envelope provided ASAP, but no later than June 14, 2004.

Manuscript submitted August 9, 2004. Revision accepted April 8, 2005.

REFERENCES

DeLacy, M. (2004, June 23). The "No Child' law's biggest victims? An answer that may surprise. Education Week, 23(41), 40.

Gallagher, J. J. (2004, Spring). No Child Left Behind and gifted education. Roeper Review, 26, 121-123.

Gallagher, J. J. (2005, May 25). National security and educational excellence. Education Week, 24(38), 32-33.

Green, N. (2005, April 12). Dear Senators Enzi and Kenned): Retrieved July 20, 2006, from http://www.nagc.org/uploadedFiles/PDF/Advocacy_P DFs/senate%20ltr%20on%20s.493.pdf

Grey, T. (Producer). (2004, May 25). Merrow report on gifted education. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer [Television broadcast]. Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service.

Janofsky, M. (2005, July). Education Official Suggests Expansion of Testing. New York Times. Retrieved July 19, 2005, from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/education/ 09spellings.html

Kaplan, S. N. (2004, Spring). Where we stand determines the answers to the question: Can the No Child Left Behind legislation be beneficial to gifted students? Roeper Review 26, 124-125.

National Association for Gifted Children. (n.d.). S.493/H. R. 1156. Bills to increase teacher familiarity with the educational needs of gifted and talented children. Retrieved August 18, 2006, from http://www.nagc.org/uploadedFiles/PDF/Advocacy_P DFs/S493.pdf

National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (2003). No dream denied: A pledge to America's children. Washington, DC: Author.

Sanders, W., & Rivers, J. (1996). Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student academic achievement (Research Progress Rep.). Knoxville: University of Tennessee, Value Added Research and Assessment.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2002, November 6). Proficiency is not enough. Education Week, 22(10), 36-38.

Professor Charlotte Mendoza created and continues to direct Colorado College's Summer Program for Gifted Children, which completed its 25th year of operation in 2005. She received her BA degree from Queens College of the City University of New York, her EdM from Harvard University, and her EdD from the University of Rochester. She chairs the Education Department at Colorado College and teaches a variety of courses for undergraduates and graduates in the teacher education program. She appreciates the contribution and candor of Colorado teachers who responded to the inquiry that is the basis of this manuscript. E-mail: [e-mail]