Suggestions for administrators of rural schools about developing a gifted program

Pitts, Mark

doi:10.1080/02783198609552999

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The program, while begun with partial grant funding, is now paid for mostly by the local schools on a shared basis. Pitts (1986) emphasizes seven planning suggestions for administrators in rural areas who are developing gifted programs. He stresses thorough planning, the critical nature of the identification process, starting small, using existing resources, adequate transportation, and meeting local needs.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Special Program for Highly Able Rural Youth in Grades Five and Six

Aldrich

Mills

1989

Gifted Child Quarterly

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There are many barriers to appropriate programming for highly gifted students in rural schools. This paper describes an attempt to overcome these barriers. Twp New York State County Boards of Cooperative Services (B.O.C E.S.) cooperated to begin a program for 32 fifth and sixth grade academically advanced students from 19 schools covering 2600 square miles. The local schools sent students one full day a week to one of five sites for advanced level study in humanities and science.Objective and subjective evaluation indicated that the model was successful. Now in its third year, serving 130 students, this model may serve as one approach for small, rural, geographically distant schools. Barriers to ProgramsThere have been at least three barriers to meaningful educational challenges for highly gifted students in rural schools. One has been the assumption that high level academic giftedness rarely exists in rural, sparsely populated areas. Because &dquo;rural&dquo; is often associated with &dquo;disadvantaged&dquo; or &dquo;impoverished&dquo; (Lewis, 1982), children from rural areas are assumed to be academically deficient. The second is that even if a case of unusual academic talent were uncovered, a school would not have the resources to educate that student properly (Carmichael, 1982). A third, more subtle barrier has been the assumption that if &dquo;gifted&dquo; services are to be offered by a school, they should be available to a relatively large number of their students (e.g., all those with above average abilities). The result is that the special needs of the small number of highly able children are often overlooked.In schools where gifted/talented programs do exist, quite often the program consists of enrichment activities within the regular classroom or a pull-out situation in which students meet for as little as one or two hours per week. An accelerated or advanced level curriculum is rarely adopted because teachers often lack the training in a specific discipline to provide appropriate accelerated learning (Dunne, 1977; Moore & Wood, 1988). The result is that a truly differentiated curriculum at a high level is difficult for many schools to provide.The consequences of these barriers and programmatic compromises are that highly gifted children rarely receive appropriate educational experience (Lewis, 1982;Spicker, Southern, & Davis, 1987). With this in mind, three years ago, four counties in upstate New York requested their intermediate unit (the Board of Cooperative Educational Services or BOCES) to identify and provide advanced level instruction to highly able elementary students. These counties are situated in a rural setting with large distances separating schools. In addition, the economic climate in these counties is weak.During the previous 10 years, the BOCES had actively encouraged the hiring of a teacher for the gifted or an enrichment teacher in each of the school districts on a shared or full-time basis. The BOCES also offered enrichment minicourses during and after school on a wide variety of ...

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Special Program for Highly Able Rural Youth in Grades Five and Six

Aldrich

Mills

1989

Gifted Child Quarterly

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“…Rural communities have historically found it difficult to offer the range of programs necessary to meet the needs of gifted Indian students (Bull, 1987;Kleinsasser, 1988;Pitts, 1986). Several reasons are offered for the problems that rural schools experience with disproportionate representation of minorities in special programs.…”

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Increasing Native American Indian involvement in gifted programs in rural schools

Montgomery

2001

Psychology in the Schools

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Native American Indian students are not identified or served at the same rate as their majority counterparts. Javits Grants are part of a small federal program providing funding for direct service research and demonstration projects. The purpose of the grants is to resolve the problems in identifying and meeting the needs of underrepresented gifted populations. Herein is a description of Project LEAP, which was designed to identify and meet the needs of rural high school students who have gifts, talents, or high potential. The project was funded for three years. The information provided in this discussion was collected through on-site interviews with all project staff and written reports from students at the end of each project year. The project was planned with four conceptual goals: community collaboration, partnership with parents, culturally relevant identification, and appropriate curriculum. Two themes emerged from an analysis of the interview and project documentation data regarding the implementation of the four Project goals: (a) the rural linkages that existed and were forged and (b) the authenticity infused into all project activities to discover and nurture gifts, talents, or high potential.

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“…In theory, increased access to gifted education programming as an intervention designed to increase student learning may work well. For example, schools have been found to achieve positive results when all students are exposed to advanced courses and programs (Pitts, 1986;Renzulli & Reis, 2002;VanTassel-Baska, 2006). However, given that most gifted education programs are composed of predominantly White students in most schools and the often painful student experience of being the only or one of the few ethnic minority students in predominantly White learning environments, more evidence is needed before this can be asserted as "best practice" for all students, regardless of ethnicity (Briggs et al, 2008;Covay, 2013;Yoon & Gentry, 2009).…”

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Gifted Ethnic Minority Students and Academic Achievement

Henfield

Woo

Bang

2016

Gifted Child Quarterly

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We conducted a meta-analysis exploring ethnic minority students enrolled in gifted/advanced programs with an emphasis on their academic achievement outcomes. A comprehensive search based on the Transparent Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis checklist, was performed to retrieve articles within a 30-year time period (1983-2014), which resulted in 13 articles that were included in this meta-analysis. We analyzed the data using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis and presented the findings with descriptive information about gifted programs and statistical information, including effect size of each gifted program and overall effect size. Statistically significant positive overall intervention effect sizes were found; however, descriptive data revealed issues with the current state of research on gifted ethnic minority students.

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Suggestions for administrators of rural schools about developing a gifted program

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

A Special Program for Highly Able Rural Youth in Grades Five and Six

A Special Program for Highly Able Rural Youth in Grades Five and Six

Increasing Native American Indian involvement in gifted programs in rural schools

Gifted Ethnic Minority Students and Academic Achievement

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