Chapter 16 - Services for High-End Learners

Gifted children are labeled in most schools as a prerequisite to services, meaning that services such as acceleration, participation in competitions, enrichment programs and other specially designed instruction are available only to students labeled as gifted. Children in the Quaker Valley Schools, however, do not require the gifted label to receive these services. Instead, their gifted needs are identified and accommodated without the need for qualifying scores that do not measure strong interest, previous experience, maturation, or motivation. All services are open and available to any child who has the need for them. Needs are identified based on achievement data, classroom performance, and behavioral data, but services can be created and implemented without the intensive testing, lengthy timelines, and delayed implementation required by formal identification. See the Critical Attribute explanation above. 

There may be instances, however, when you and your child’s team believe additional testing would be helpful for planning, at which time that process can be used. Please feel free to request an evaluation and the team will be happy to meet with you. 

It is helpful to first probe a little beyond the face value of this statement. Ask your child to tell you what he/she doesn’t like about the class or assignment at issue. Listen carefully. Sometimes the work is challenging, and the child is unnerved by the unexpected difficulty. Sometimes there is an issue with the topic being studied. Sometimes he/she’s out of sorts with her group or teacher. But if the work seems like review or your child is frustrated or unhappy, your first call should be to his/her teacher. Be prepared to offer specific examples in the work or behaviors you see that make you think that your child may require something different. Share information about your child that the teacher may not know – experiences or interests he/she has, things that he/she does at home that may offer insight into what opportunities or choices you think may help make school a better fit. Ask for the teacher’s assessment of your child and his/her classroom observations. Problem-solve together for what steps to take and plan to meet again to discuss how things are working.  

The answer to this question will vary depending on the age of the child. Minor amounts of homework may be intentional, and the purpose for homework differs among units of instruction and at different grade levels.  Sometimes homework is a review of the day’s lesson and meant to simply reinforce or practice the concept. Other times, it surveys prior knowledge or interest. Some students manage their time well and get started in spare minutes during the day or on the bus. In general, students should not struggle, and homework should not dominate the time outside of school. First look over his work and check for completeness and accuracy. Monitor assessments and other work that comes home for the level of rigor and your child’s degree of success with it. Contact his teacher with homework concerns, but enjoy extra time at home for enrichment and play, as appropriate. 

Differentiation is a broad term encompassing a wide variety of instructional methods that customize learning for small groups or individual students whose instructional needs differ from their classmates. Differentiation can occur in the complexity of content or materials students are exposed to, in the different processes they use to learn, in the kinds of products they generate to demonstrate their learning, in the homework they are assigned, in the environment they are placed for learning, such as bright or dimmed lights, music or quiet, etc. and in the learning styles they prefer, such as group or independent tasks, visual, auditory, or hands-on lessons, etc.   

Enrichment is one differentiation strategy. Enrichment is lessons, activities, assignments or materials that extend or enhance the curriculum in a way that deepens or challenges understanding, supports personal interest, and/or further engages students in new learning about the topic under study.  

Your children’s academic growth is assessed often and in a variety of ways throughout the school year. Reviewing standardized data sent home to you in mailings, achievement noted on report cards, and graded assignments should give you a good picture of your child’s progress through the curriculum. If your children come home happy, engaged, tired, and can tell you what they learned each day, chances are they are growing. Growth data, such as PVAAS, exist, but are statistically of limited value in districts that are very small and among our students that are significantly above or below average/ grade level. Any questions about growth can be directed to your child’s teacher, the counselor, the academic specialist or the principal.  

Sometimes differentiation at the classroom level is designed not to be noticed, for example a teacher may give various groups questions or tasks at different levels of complexity, but you see only the materials designed for your own child’s level. Sometimes student choice is the method of differentiation and you learn what choice your child made. Sometimes homework is different for different groups and you see only what has been assigned to your child. In these instances, you may be unaware that teachers are engaging in sophisticated and prescriptive planning for your child. Teachers should communicate with you, however, if your child requires differentiation that indicates your child is working significantly above or below grade level expectations.  

Classroom instruction often involves activities, projects, games, and other strategies that students find very engaging. Teachers provide students with a variety of choices in how and where and with whom they complete their various assignments throughout the day. Their schedules are often so packed that there is little “extra” time to indulge personal interests, however, when students finish their work earlier than others or pre-test out of some instruction, minutes can be gained and spent in a variety of ways that vary by classroom, age, maturity level, and need. From personalized book selections, learning centers and computer applications, to long term independent projects, classrooms are full of opportunities for students to explore their interests. Contact your child’s teacher or the academic specialist for more information about these options. 

Quaker Valley is proud of the professional teaming between classroom teachers and the myriad of support staff in each building. To make meetings about students more efficient, to have more minds around the table contributing to the thinking and decision-making, to be more comprehensive in the delivery of whatever is needed, and for the convenience and respect of our parents who may need to leave a workplace of their own during the day, we endeavor to have “all hands on deck” whenever possible. We are dedicated to serving the whole child, thus academic specialists, counselors, learning specialists, and administrators are present with parents to consider all aspects of the child’s needs. 

Teachers and administrators use many data points, classroom observations and other factors to create class rosters that will optimize the experiences of all students, while working within the parameters of schedules, class sizes, and special needs. The elementary schools use a cluster grouping system where students with similar needs are deliberately placed together and benefit from working together in an otherwise heterogeneous classroom that has been structured to lessen the extremes of need in any single room. Middle and High School placements in leveled classes are a function of assessment data, grades, and teacher recommendations. Careful consideration is given to each placement decision; however, extenuating circumstances may occasionally necessitate changes. Contact the building principal or counselor if you’d like to discuss your concerns or questions. 

Level 1 services, which are offered to all students, are embedded in the classrooms where all students participate and benefit from the educational value of the opportunity. Curriculum extensions and enrichment are available in each classroom for use as needed. Building or grade level trips, assemblies, projects, and other Level 1 experiences occur throughout the year. 

Level 2 services are available to students by academic need, interest or ability. Teachers differentiate instructional strategies for small groups to accommodate diverse learning needs. For some activities, interested students participate in qualifying rounds in the classroom or are pulled to complete the preliminaries for the chance to compete against other schools. Some activities, such as Odyssey of the Mind, are outside of the school day.   

Level 3 services are available to individual or small groups of students through assessed need and include learning contracts, curriculum compacting and other more targeted interventions. 

Level 4 services are usually highly individualized to accommodate more extreme need and generally include subject or grade acceleration. 

Services are delivered by a variety of teachers (classroom, specialists, special area teachers) and in a variety of places, including classrooms, the large group instruction room, the library, the playground, etc. dependent upon the activity and its duration.

More typical programs may offer a time, generally up to a few hours per week, where labeled students are pulled from their regular classrooms and provided with enrichment materials, projects, competitions, and field trips that are generally outside the boundaries of the regular curriculum. Classes are limited to 20 students at a time, and gifted support teachers have a maximum of 65 students on their caseload rosters. Additionally, students attending these programs are often viewed as having similar needs when in fact they could differ substantially in interest, ability, and achievement. Individualizing services to meet the academic and creative needs across all content areas in a limited space and for a limited time is problematic in pull-out models. When students return to their classrooms where they spend the majority of their time, they often must make up what they’ve missed because the classroom teacher cannot be certain that the scheduled time for their gifted class is at the best time for them to miss the instruction taking place in their absence. Because a single gifted support teacher usually services multiple grades and sometimes multiple buildings, the students are pulled according to the support teacher’s availability rather than the students’ needs.   

Very little research supports gifted models of this nature since assessment of the enrichment provided is not a part of any testing program. Schools vary widely in the quality and quantity of services available to gifted (and non-gifted) students. In more traditional programs, some students thrive, but some are troubled by the disruption to their schedule and the burden of “extra” work, and some are unfairly excluded from experiences that would be beneficial to them. 

Quaker Valley makes all the services we offer available to students based on need or interest, without the requirement of a qualifying label. Students do not have to wait for a designated time each week for services. Instead, services are embedded in the regular program more consistently and comprehensively. We have a dedicated Academic Specialist in each building who aids in the planning, programming, and ultimately the transition of students between buildings. (See the Levels of Service model for additional details). 

No. No college application contains a check box or space for the inclusion of a student’s gifted status. College admissions offices focus solely on transcripts, recommendations, test scores, activities, experiences, and other more standard markers of excellence and achievement.  

Because in the United States gifted education exists only in some states, but not all, and in some districts and at some grade levels, colleges do not seek this information. Local gifted programs vary widely in eligibility criteria, quality, and substance, thus a student’s inclusion in or exclusion from them has no meaning or consideration in the college selection process. 

The primary purpose of such tests is to identify and serve only those children who score above a certain cutoff point. In very large schools where such screening is needed by the sheer number of students who may require specialized instruction, the test is efficient, if not optimal, in narrowing the pool of students eligible for further testing.  It is also used in schools where seats in gifted programs are limited. At QV, neither situation is the case. In grades K-12, students are screened individually three times each year with achievement tools that clearly identify outliers (students with scores significantly above or below grade level expectations) who may then be further tested should the need arise for additional information to inform programming decisions.  

In addition to mandatory yearly state testing, we test all students in grades 8, 9, 10, and 11 using the College Board's PSAT tests, which can alert us to "late bloomers" or students working beyond grade-level curriculum. These tests include helpful benchmark scores to measure student readiness for college or career.

Group IQ tests are regarded as less accurate than individually administered tests, and would require additional time away from instruction, which is already at a premium. We find that other sources of data, along with parent or teacher information, are often sufficient for identifying needs and programming to meet them.

Parents may request additional testing at any time, however, by contacting the building principal or the Director of Student Services. 

Benchmark assessments are short assessments or writing prompts that are given to all students at a grade level to determine each student’s performance against the grade-level expectations. These “snapshots” give information about how students are progressing toward state goals for their grade level. The results are most often used to guide instruction and determine curriculum effectiveness. 

Statistical “norms” are data that compare your child to others of the same age, such as the PSAT scores in middle and high school. They are designed to give parents a snapshot of their child relative to others of the same age across the nation. They are normally best understood as percentiles - not percents. A child who scores in the 81st percentile scored the same or better than 81% of the students of the same age who took the same test. National norms compare our students to all US students who took the same test at the same time. In contrast, local norms compare our students only to each other. In general, our students’ scores are much higher when compared to a national population and are more discriminating when compared to each other. Local norms are most useful in helping educators place students in the most appropriate instructional groupings. 

Acceleration is an intervention strategy that is highly supported by a wealth of research. When a student consistently performs well beyond grade level expectations or beyond any grade level cohort of students or by achievement, out-performs the differentiated curriculum, acceleration is warranted. Acceleration can be implemented in a single subject or a full grade level, or in extreme cases, multiple grade levels. Typical forms of acceleration include, but are not limited to: early entrance to kindergarten, subject acceleration, grade acceleration, completing middle school in two years,  dual enrollment in high school and college, College in HS courses, Advanced Placement (AP) course enrollment, and early graduation. 

Quaker Valley HS currently offers more than a dozen AP courses taught by our teachers in-house, with additional courses available on-line.  We practice open enrollment, and all enrolled students are required to take the associated exam, at the district's expense. With approval, advanced students may choose to take exams in courses they've studied independently.

All concerns about your child should first be directed toward a member of your child’s team: begin with the classroom teacher or the school counselor, followed by the principal, who will involve any other support staff as appropriate.  Complaints directed toward District Office administration will often be redirected to the building level if the building staff has not been involved first.  See Board policy 902. 

Dual exceptionalities, for example, students with strong ability and Autism Spectrum disorder or a specific learning disability, require sophisticated diagnostic and prescriptive instruction that is highly individualized to work through strength areas while developing compensatory strategies for learning challenges.  These students often require that we collect more extensive and individualized test data.  We use a team approach in analyzing the data and determining what adjustments and modifications will work best with this very unique set of learning parameters.  

Some students with dual exceptionalities or those who under- or selectively achieve are placed in classes at their instructional level, even when their work completion or grades are at odds with their abilities and potential.  

Our open access to and nimble delivery of enrichment and other high-end learner services makes accommodating twice-exceptional students a routine occurrence.