Weaving the gifted into the full fabric: it's possible to accommodate the learning needs of all students without a discrete program for those on the high end.

If you're the parent or the grandparent of a kindergartner who's come home on the first day of school to tell you that there are three groups of "animals" in his class--the cheetahs, the beavers and the turtles--you already have some understanding of the challenges facing gifted education today. And you definitely won't welcome the thought of asking to which group your most cherished "baby" has been assigned!

I am absolutely convinced, after more than 30 years in education, that all of those children are cheetahs. Given that belief, however, I also know that how we go about transforming our instructional models, our curriculum, our specialized programs (and even how we choose our textbooks and scheduling models) will determine whether those children will consistently perform at a level commensurate with their innate abilities.

Making that transformation reality, as opposed to rhetoric, is one of the most daunting tasks facing educators in America's schools today. It is also one that we must seriously consider within the larger context of our progress as a nation.

Common Misconceptions 

What interferes with our efforts to redefine gifted education in our schools? And what makes it difficult to move toward an instructional model that supports the basic truth that "what's good for some is good for all?"

There are certainly several fairly well-accepted misconceptions related to just what gifted education means, and that contributes to the dilemma. For example, it is generally thought that education for gifted children is a program separate from the rest of the curriculum. In other words, offerings in gifted studies are discrete and are provided to meet the needs of discretely defined groups of students.

I have seen this demonstrated repeatedly in school budgets of the districts I led. In reviewing those budgets, I would almost always find a separate line item for gifted programs, and the budget presentations always included appeals from teachers and parents of the gifted. Almost as often, those programs received little or none of the monies requested. Is this because gifted is equated to elitist? Is it because there is no power base politically to support funding for the needs of the gifted? Or is it partially because school district leadership simply does not understand what should constitute gifted education? Probably all three are part of the answer.

However, the ugly downside of this "separateness" is that all too often no effort is made to enmesh rigor, enrichment and higher-order thinking skills into the total curriculum fabric for all students. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that a rich and rigorous instructional program built on a solid foundation will accommodate the needs of all students, and if providing such a program requires a redefinition of gifted education, that is a task we will have to assume as educators.

In some educational circles, there is the belief that you should not look for giftedness in children before 2nd or 3rd grade. In my opinion, that is much too late and in fact defies common logic.

My own experience tells me that children can do amazing things at the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten level. If we can develop a model for gifted education that begins with the foundational skills, all students will have access to challenging materials and opportunities. In those early years, we will then build confidence and nurture intellectual curiosity in the youngest minds.

A Shared Belief

As a result of many widely used approaches to gifted education, those very students deemed talented often move through their educational experiences with the burden of having to seek out challenging material on their own. The assumption appears to be that those students understand more than their peers and will on their own seek more rigor and higher challenges.

When I served as superintendent in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Annapolis, Md., one of our established beliefs was the following: "There is an assumption made in America that high-performing students will get it anyway when in fact they need to be challenged and pushed just as much as all other children." If we are truly seeking to serve all students, school districts must develop instructional models that not only deliver a solid foundation, but also provide opportunities for all students to move toward enrichment and acceleration. This type of program will impact all learners.

Finally, as educators we are challenged by the fact that some still believe in using a point on the IQ scale to define giftedness. I cannot imagine a more limited means of determining the talents of the millions of young people served by our schools every day. The use of a single test score must be deemed an antiquated way to identify gifted children and, as educators, we must dedicate considerably greater efforts to redefining the gifted label as well as determining what gifted education represents.

Meanwhile, school districts nationwide must cast a wider net to serve a larger population of students with rigorous programs. I have seen for myself that when high expectations and higher standards are applied to a larger population of students, a larger number come to the surface as bright students. This significantly affects those groups typically underrepresented in gifted education and ultimately has a positive impact on the entire student body at a given school.

An Early Start

Gifted education starts the first time a child sets foot inside a school classroom, and it starts ideally at the pre-kindergarten level. As noted earlier, many educators think students should be sorted into the gifted and the average somewhere around 3rd grade. I believe that rather than being sorted, children should be brought as early as possible into a rich and exciting learning environment, certainly no later than kindergarten and earlier if possible.

As superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district in the late 1990s, I worked with staff and the local business community to create a full-day literacy-based initiative for 4-year-olds that would involve them in enrichment activities. We had noticed that many of our students were not successful in elementary school and that the problem, language deficits, was apparent in kindergarten. The program that we developed, called Bright Beginnings, was a language-rich environment, and we developed our own curriculum for students.

Students were selected through an interview process, during which we looked particularly for low-income students who had deficient language skills. Our goal was to have 85 percent of 3rd-grade students reading at or above grade level. The results were great. The first class of Bright Beginnings students completed 1st grade in the 1999-2000 school year. End-of-grade test scores in literacy and math showed significant and sustained benefits from participation.

Another study compared 1,382 students from the 1997-98 Bright Beginnings class to a group of 184 eligible students who did not participate and to all other 7,149 children in the 1st-grade class. African-American students and those of low socioeconomic status who participated in Bright Beginnings showed particular benefits, outperforming all segments of their respective peer groups. Today, the program serves approximately 3,000 students in 157 classrooms in Charlotte.

Do I consider Bright Beginnings a gifted program? No. What I consider it to be is a fulfillment of the fundamental role that public education plays in equalizing the playing field for all young people. By doing so, we bring as many students as possible into the richest, most challenging, most rigorous learning atmosphere that we can provide. And when we do that, we often are surprised and always gratified to find so much hidden talent at such early ages. This is the foundation upon which we will more easily build future success for all students.

During my first year as superintendent in Anne Arundel Public Schools, I faced a difficult choice about whether to close down a very old, badly underused elementary school that also was in extremely poor condition structurally. The community was adamant about keeping the school open, and previous discussions about closing the school had always caused such angst in the community that closure had been put on hold by prior school boards. However, the condition of the facility itself finally made my decision easier, and the school was closed.

In the meantime, we worked with the local community, the elected officials, and our own staff to come up with an alternate use for the building, once some much-needed work and renovation could be completed. That same year, the Ferndale Early Childhood Education Center was opened, operating in a nearby school, and the parents and community members were jubilant. They had an early learning center providing enrichment opportunities never before seen for 3- and 4-year-olds in their community. Next year, the center will once again be located in the original school building, newly renovated for many years of future use. Another early start had taken hold.

A Rising Tide 

For decades now, high schools across America have offered courses for those students designated as above average, academically talented, gifted, precocious, advanced, highly competent, accomplished, highly able--the labels are endless. And those same students have worked together in honors courses or in advanced placement courses or in small groups for seminar work, independent study or portfolio development. Up until now, the gifted programs have been reasonably segregated, in that they serve a unique student population in unique (often smaller) situations more conducive to learning and exploring knowledge.

When I served most recently in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools, another of our established beliefs was this: "If we cannot educate students to a high level, public schools should go out of business." I believe this wholeheartedly, as strongly as I believe that all students can learn and will learn to the level of expectations we set.

In Anne Arundel, we demonstrated this truth by changing our curriculum; standardizing our textbooks; opening access to advanced placement courses (and making them available to all students); modifying our scheduling; and developing an instructional model based on our belief in the limitless potential of young minds. The results were amazing at all levels.

Consider the 5th graders at a city school in Annapolis. In 2004, 43 percent of the 5th graders scored at the basic level, the lowest, on the reading portion of the state assessments. Two years later, in 2006, only 16 percent of the 5th graders scored at the basic level. Conversely, in 2004, only 11 percent of the 5th graders scored at the advanced level, the highest, but in 2006, 46 percent scored at the advanced level.

Obviously, what was good for some turned out to be good for all. Similar results were seen across the district in many of the elementary schools over the past two years.

At the high school level, in both Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Anne Arundel County, we proved that quality of instruction and quality of learning can be maintained while adding advanced placement courses, and that this can be done on a large scale. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, our district more than doubled the number of AP exams with scores that qualified students to receive college credit, and this occurred over only a five-year period.

In Anne Arundel, once again experience confirmed my belief in the value of AP studies. In one short year, from 2003 to 2004, AP participation increased by 64 percent, meaning that an additional 2,300 AP tests were taken and countless college credits earned by students. Student exams with scores of three or better increased from 2,246 in 2002 to 3,855 in 2004. And in just two short years, all but one of the county's high schools offered 20 or more AP courses for students. No one says this is easy. When a school district decides to let every willing student enroll in Advanced Placement, it presents real issues. To succeed, you must implement support systems and programs, such as vertically articulated curriculum in grades 6-12 and mandatory counseling and academic tutorials, and you must train teachers in the skills needed to effectively teach AP courses.

But the goal is lofty, and well worth the price--to maintain quality while increasing access and to let AP serve as a tide that lifts all boats. Over and over, we saw in Anne Arundel huge increases in participation and success by student populations too long underrepresented in the AP arena--a paradigm shift from one mind set to another.

Designing Curriculum

When administrators and teachers get down to putting pen to paper and turning to the actual development of curriculum, the task is understandably difficult. We all recognize there must be a curriculum designed to carry students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12. The job is overwhelming and requires the deepest commitment to students and the strongest advocacy for those students we can summon.

We acknowledge we must infuse enrichment, extension (of experience), rigor, higher-order thinking skills, excitement and opportunity for acceleration into the intricate fabric of the entire curriculum. And then we must look at all the factors that affect the delivery of that curriculum: teacher and administrator training, scheduling, textbook choice, guidance and support programs, class size and school staffing--not to mention available funding.

The challenges may sometimes seem insurmountable. However, in my travels around the country and my visits in many school districts, I have observed some of the highest quality teaching and the most incredible learning taking place.

As educators, I believe that we are learning, and we must continue to learn how to build the strongest foundation for our young people at an early age. And we must do that by developing an instructional program that weaves the needs of the gifted into the entire fabric of our curriculum in such a way that the thread is not discernible to the naked eye.

If we can achieve that balance in our curriculum--a balance that defies identification of cheetahs and beavers and turtles--we will surely have achieved the intent of No Child Left Behind. And every child will be a cheetah!

Eric Smith, a former superintendent in four school districts, is senior vice president for college readiness systems with The College Board, 45 Columbus Ave., New York, N.Y. 10023. Emil: [e-mail]