Not enough students test as 'gifted'? Just change definition and do more tests

Gifted individuals, those with an IQ of 125 or higher, make up only about 5 percent of the population, according to the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. In the city of Davis, school officials are using dubious means to boost the percentage of those considered gifted.

Two years ago, the Davis school board, concerned that not enough African-American and Hispanic children were testing into the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program, lowered the score for GATE identification. That led to 35 percent of third-graders in Davis being identified as gifted.

Trying to correct the absurd result, the board again tinkered with the identification procedures. This still led to 26 percent of its students being classified as gifted this year.

This month, the board is again wrestling with the issue of identifying gifted students. But it does so not because of concern that 26 percent is still more than three times the state average. Instead, it is because three board members are concerned that those identified as gifted remain predominantly white and Asian.

This misguided, feel-good insistence that all children are gifted somehow in their own way fails the needs of those brightest young minds that the GATE program is designed to address.

Laura Vanderkam, co-author of "Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds," says, "If only the top 1 percent of students are in the 'gifted' group, then it actually means something. If the top 25 percent are in it, then you've made it so broad as to be meaningless, and not helpful to the highly gifted in the group."

Such a meaningless quality seems to be exactly what several Davis trustees have in mind. Martha West would prefer to see the GATE program dismantled altogether and the money spent elsewhere. Jim Provenza favors a model where classes offered to GATE-identified students would be available to any student whose parents request it.

But according to James Delisle, a professor of education at Kent State University in Ohio and a part-time teacher of gifted children in Ohio public schools, such a "schoolwide enrichment plan generally fails to provide the sustenance necessary to fulfill the complex lives of gifted children."

Beyond defeating the purpose of GATE, here's what the false sense of equality advocated by the Davis trustees amounts to: telling parents that "all our children are gifted" while refusing to challenge the brightest minds by painting such nurturing as exclusive and elitist.

While the No Child Left Behind Act has rightly drawn attention to at-risk groups often on the bottom of the achievement ladder, gifted children who fall through the cracks go mostly unnoticed. Without a rigorous curriculum that matches their ability to learn, gifted children are often diagnosed as hyperactive or as having attention-deficit disorders. Research indicates that up to 20 percent of high school dropouts test in the gifted range. Closing the achievement gap of struggling students should not come at the expense of our gifted and talented.

Equally misguided is the attempt to engineer racial parity in the GATE program. Documents show the Davis school district has been busy cooking the numbers. After rescreening and retesting 127 third-graders, the district was able to boost the percentage of Latino and African-American students among the GATE-identified.

But the truth is no amount of engineering or quotas will lead to real gains for students. Real gains come only with true education reform. Where such reform exists, minorities succeed, often in high numbers.

From the inner city of Oakland, each year students from the American Indian Charter School qualify for the nationally noted talent search program conducted by Johns Hopkins University. This is because Principal Ben Chavis insists on a tough curriculum and maintains high expectations for his all-minority student body.

Lowered standards and racial quotas cannot create gifted children, in Davis or anywhere else. In fact, these policies are a recipe for mediocrity. To boost minority achievement and meet the needs of gifted children, school boards statewide would do better to follow the example of Mr. Chavis.