Gifted students are not immune from misconceptions, and two representatives from the Center for Gifted Studies at Western Kentucky University made it their business to dispel them during a clinic session at KSBA’s annual conference.
Associate Director Tracy Inman and Mary Evans, Javits Grant program director, explained the concept of excellence gaps and what school board members can do about them. Unlike achievement gaps, excellence gaps are among the highest levels of achievement. They are differences in scores at the advanced level among subgroups of students. Those gaps can be created by poverty, bias and discrimination, and negative peer pressure. Students from poor families, many minorities and English language learners all are underrepresented at the highest level of achievement, Inman and Evans pointed out. This is documented in both national standardized testing and Kentucky testing.
“We need to bump it up,” Inman said. “If we spent 30 years on proficiency, then that’s what we get: proficiency. We’re not nurturing these kids.”
In Kentucky, there is another kind of gap that is a contributing factor: Education students are not required to take a course in gifted education while working on their teaching degree, Inman noted.
It is often the highest-ability students who don’t make progress or growth in school because they aren’t being stimulated, Evans said. Sometimes those students act out from boredom. “So often discipline problems disappear when they are provided more opportunities,” Inman said.
Once identified and provided with services, “we’re going to see them blossom and really come forward,” she said. The services can include out-of-school activities like summer camps. “Two weeks in the summer makes a difference,” Evans said. The Center for Gifted Studies offers several types of camps for students at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Both the Center and the Kentucky Association for Gifted Education provide scholarships to students who can’t afford to attend these camps.
“What research tells us throughout the nation is if we learn different ways to find these kids and different ways to help them grow, we’re going to see amazing things happen,” Inman said.