Editor’s note: A different version of this essay was first published by The 74.
In New York City, thousands of students deemed “gifted” by the Department of Education’s own assessment standards are denied access advanced-education programs due to the lack of available seats.
Their parents are desperate for options when it comes to accommodating children capable of doing above grade-level work. In a city of close to 1 million students, where, in some neighborhoods, for example, half are scoring in the top 10th percentile on IQ tests, that equals thousands of underserved kids.
Several states, including Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, offer an individualized education plan for advanced students. A few more, like Arizona, Florida, and Kentucky, have a variation, like an "individual service plan” or a “gifted student service plan.”
I asked subscribers to my NYC School Secrets mailing list whether they would support a situation like the one currently available in Kansas, where advanced programming is bundled under special education and all students who qualify receive an IEP.
Provisions of this law include:
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“Special education” means the following: Specially designed instruction, at no cost to the parents, to meet the unique needs of an exceptional child.
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Each gifted child shall be permitted to test out of, or work at an individual rate, and receive credit for required or prerequisite courses, or both, at all grade levels, if so specified in that child’s individualized education program. Any gifted child may receive credit for college study at the college or high school level, or both. If a gifted child chooses to receive college credit, however, the student shall be responsible for the college tuition costs.
This arrangement would have been particularly useful for my family and might have kept my middle child from dropping out of high school when he wasn’t allowed to take the higher-level classes he wanted. I tried to enroll him in college but hit a bureaucratic wall when they wouldn’t accept him without a high school diploma, even though he scored higher on standardized tests than the average student the college accepted.
The majority of my fellow NYC parents were in favor of a similar statute for New York state.
“Absolutely! This is so necessary,” cheered mother of three Laura B. “Gifted children definitely have special needs and they should be educated at the level they deserve. I fully support a bill like this for NYC.”
“It would be amazing if public school could provide material at [advanced kids’] level,” sighed A.K. a mother of two, “instead of the cookie-cutter curriculum they shove down the throats of all students.”
Elaine Daly, parent, social worker, and school counselor, did express concerns about how these children would be identified. “Would [the IEP assessment] be designed with the understanding that traditional tests are not the only standard of gifted?”
A lack of qualified teachers is what worries mom Iona Baldini. “I’m concerned that schools don’t have teachers who can work with gifted kids. There are very few teachers that can meet gifted kids at their level. I think we need infrastructure and a different mindset to teach gifted students.”
Gayle Doyle, a one-time advanced child herself, isn’t concerned. “Part of being gifted means that you are challenging and learning yourself. In fourth grade, our class implemented a ‘test out’ for math. You took the test before the unit, and if you scored above a certain level, you didn’t have to go through that lesson and were given more advanced work to do independently. I tested out of all the units. I was able to go into the hallway during math lessons where I worked on more challenging math problems. It was completely self-led, the teachers only had to provide problems for me to work on, but there was no instruction. I found it better this way, and this was done a while ago without IEPs.”
Finally, a parent who asked to be identified as KC sees another bright side to offering IEPs for advanced students. “There is a lot of prejudice against kids with an IEP by other parents. The number of times I’ve heard them complain about having their ‘gen ed’ kid being in a class with an IEP kid (like mine) is too disappointing to list. That’s because there’s an assumption that IEP always means my kids have a negative trait that will ‘hold their [kid] back.’ A law like this might help these parents realize that there are equally deserving IEP students who should have their skills nurtured.”
Assessing students and implementing individualized education plans is an expense few school districts, especially NYC, which is losing enrollment—and thus funding—can afford. An obvious, cost-effective solution would be to offer a higher-level curriculum for all. This across-the-board upgrade should be enough for most of those currently considered advanced. But pleas to that effect have fallen on deaf ears for decades. The curriculum is, instead, dumbed down, most recently with the removal of Regents exams as a graduation requirement.
If the only way parents can get an appropriate education for their academically advanced child is by demanding the same “free and appropriate public education” currently only available to those classified as “handicapped” by the U.S. Department of Education, then that’s what they may need to resort to. I realize it would put extra strain on an already overtaxed system, and it would cost more. I would rather not go that route. It’s the worst possible option for everyone, families and schools, in terms of expense and effort. But it feels like NYC parents have been left with no alternatives.
