[Ohiogift] Fwd: Who benefits from gifted education, the sequel

Wed Oct 28 11:59:40 EDT 2015

Hi Sally and co:

A few points on this:

  1.  Hattie reported small, but positive, effects of ability grouping on academic achievement.
  2.  Hattie lumps together old school “tracking” where students are assigned to tracks and then rarely or never have opportunities to move to different groups. In some cases, the tracks were established on the basis of IQ scores rather than more specific assessments of achievement aligned with curriculum. This is, of course, not very effective for any group and is damaging for students who are assigned to the lowest track at the outset. Flexible grouping, characterized by regular re-assessment of students using instruments chosen on the basis of their validity for predicting success with a specific level of curriculum and the use of curricula tailored to the learning needs of each group, is an entirely different animal and should not be conflated (as Hattie does) with traditional “tracking.” It is a much different intervention and one that can produce significant achievement gains across the spectrum of students, including high achievers, low achievers, and special populations such as language minority students. Because he lumps studies of tracking together with studies of ability grouping, negative findings from studies on tracking wash out strong positive effects found in studies of flexibility ability grouping.
  3.  Many of the studies cited attributed a tendency for students in the lower ability groups to be assigned the least experienced teachers. Many of the authors of those studies have concluded that negative findings are likely more attributable to differences in teacher quality vs. the grouping itself.
  4.  There is quite a bit of agreement in the literature that ability grouping by itself does very little to benefit anyone. (For gifted students, there may be some modest social-emotional benefit but not much academic benefit.) However, ability grouping when combined with deliberate efforts to tailor the curriculum to address the needs of each group has a large impact over and above within-class differentiation in ungrouped classrooms. Grouping students with more similar learning needs seems to  make differentiation more sustainable.
  5.  The most effective approach is to use flexible grouping based on readiness to learn a particular block of content, assigning students to groups using ongoing assessment aligned to curriculum, providing support to teachers working with each group to allow them to effectively tailor the curriculum to their group, and adding acceleration to the mix so that groupings can span beyond a single grade level.

For folks interested in exploring this issue further, Carol Tieso’s article on “The Effectiveness of Grouping Practices and Curricular Adjustments on Achievement” from the Journal for the Education of the Gifted is a good jumping off point.

Kathryn, I am not familiar with studies that have found that gifted self-contained classes with 14 or fewer students are outperformed by larger gifted self-contained classes. I’d be interested in reading more about that if you have a reference you can share for that. I’m especially interested in this if it comes from Hattie given that elsewhere he’s argued that class size has small effects. (As a sidenote, I’m skeptical of that finding as well considering that, in practice, small classes disproportionately exist in small rural schools (which are often underresourced and struggle mightily with retaining experienced teachers) or serve students with significant learning disabilities,  cognitive disabilities, limited English proficiency, or emotional/behavior disorders which exert their own influence on achievement. But, when looking at outcomes of any intervention for gifted students, we also have to take into consideration the validity of the measurement instruments used. Gifted self-contained classes, where they exist, typically serve the most advanced students. These students often “hit the ceiling” on large scale grade level assessments that typically serve as the data sources for large studies that look at whole student populations in districts and states. Consequently, it doesn’t look like they're growing much because much of their growth is learning beyond what the tests use measure. NBER had a great paper on this a few years ago that I highly recommend to anyone attempting to evaluate the impact of interventions for gifted students: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14778

Have a good afternoon,

Eric Calvert
Center for Talent Development
Northwestern University
From: Sally Roberts <ms118rbts at aol.com<mailto:ms118rbts at aol.com>>
Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 8:16 PM
To: Eric C Calvert <eric.calvert at northwestern.edu<mailto:eric.calvert at northwestern.edu>>, Ann Sheldon <AnnGift at aol.com<mailto:AnnGift at aol.com>>, "brierchv at gmail.com<mailto:brierchv at gmail.com>" <brierchv at gmail.com<mailto:brierchv at gmail.com>>
Subject: Fwd: [Ohiogift] Fwd: Who benefits from gifted education, the sequel

John Hattie again....AAUGH!
Eric, are you aware of any research to respond to the negative impact statement below?
Thanks,
Sally

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Subject: Re: [Ohiogift] Fwd: Who benefits from gifted education, the sequel

Such a good discussion!

I feel obligated to point out that meta-analyses from John Hattie's Visible Learning show that there is actually a decline in student learning (a negative impact) when the self-contained group of gifted students falls to 14.

Kathryn Craig, Gifted Intervention Specialist
Roxboro and Boulevard Elementary Schools
Cleveland Heights, University Heights
k_craig at chuh.org<mailto:k_craig at chuh.org>
216.371.7115, ext. 54445

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. "
                                                                                                            --  Aristotle

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Subject: Re: [Ohiogift] Fwd: Who benefits from gifted education, the sequel

The research also has shown that there is little measurable academic growth if gifted learners are put in separate classes but given the same general studies curriculum. There may be positive social-emotional impact, but I have never looked up the research on this. But yes, self-contained GT classes that use a faster pace and advanced materials are essentially no-cost alternatives, especially if (in smaller districts) multi-age grouping is used to create appropriately sized classes that are consistent with the class size range in the other classes. It isn't defensible in many districts to have gifted self-contained classes with 15-20 kids when other kids have 30-35. And there is a difference between "defensible" and "ideal"....of course for all children, the smaller the class size, the more individual teacher attention is possible and the more differentiation is probable.
Susan

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Subject: [Ohiogift] Fwd: Who benefits from gifted education, the sequel

Friends:

Thanks to my library, I now have a copy of the original NBER study I mentioned a few days ago.  The full study confirmed (p. 8) that the students who were placed in the so-called "gifted" classes followed the same curriculum as all other students in the school.  Students who completed their tasks more quickly were assigned "enrichment" activities.

In addition, the study also found that the students who remained in their classrooms after the gifted students were removed did not experience any drop in achievement.

They conclude that a "separate gifted classroom environment can be highly effective in raising the standardized of students selected on the basis of past achievement, particularly disadvantaged and minority students who would not normally qualify for gifted education programs that use an absolute admission standard. ... a comprehensive tracking program that establishes a separate classroom in every school for the top performing students could
could significantly boost the performance of the most talented students in even the poorest neighborhoods, at little or no cost to other students or the District's budget."

Imagine what could happen if those gifted classes actually included an advanced curriculum!

Margaret

Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 12:07:35 -0700
To: list for OATAG, xl-PDX at yahoogroups.com<mailto:xl-PDX at yahoogroups.com>, Ohiogift, Tagfam
From: Margaret DeLacy <margaretdelacy at comcast.net<mailto:margaretdelacy at comcast.net>>
Subject: Who benefits from gifted education?

Friends:

Below is a link to a study and a summary of the study that came out last year from the National Bureau of Economic Research.   I haven't checked out the full study yet, but it seems to me that the authors' conclusions are questionable.  The summary refers to a study of three groups of 4-5 grade students (1) students who scored over 130 on an IQ test; (2) ELL and low-income students who scored over 116 and (3) the highest scorers on an achievement test the previous year.

These students were placed together in a "gifted" classroom that used the same curriculum and the same tests each year as the other district classes.  The students in group (1) did not make gains; the students in group (2) made small gains and among the students in group (3) the minority and low-income students made relatively large gains.

The problem with the study is that it merely replicates many other studies that have found that grouping alone is not an effective strategy for gifted students. ....

http://www.nber.org/papers/w20453

http://www.nber.org/digest/jan15/w20453.html

Who Benefits from Education for the Gifted?

Full-time classes for the gifted don't raise scores of high-IQ gifted students but have positive effects on other high achievers.

In Does Gifted Education Work? For Which Students? (NBER Working Paper No. 20453), David Card and Laura Giuliano report that full-time classes set up for gifted students don't raise the achievement of gifted students, but have large positive effects on non-gifted high achievers in those classes - especially on the reading and math scores of low-income high achievers. The authors conclude that establishing "a separate classroom in every school for the top-performing students could significantly boost the performance of [these] students in even the poorest neighborhoods," without harming other students or increasing school budgets.

Using detailed administrative data from one of the largest school districts in the United States, the authors tracked the progress of three distinct groups of students who were eligible for placement in classes for the gifted from 2004 through 2011. District policy required each elementary school to set up a separate gifted class for all students in the fourth or fifth grade who met one of two criteria. So-called "Plan A" gifted students scored at least 130 points on an IQ test. The policy also allows a lower threshold (116 points) for the "Plan B" gifted students - i.e., English-language learners and participants in the free and reduced-price lunch program. Finally, since many schools have relatively few gifted students in a grade, the remaining seats are offered to non-gifted students who scored the highest on the previous year's state-wide achievement tests (known as "high achievers"). Classes for the gifted are the same size as other classes in the district, and students follow the same curriculum and write the same standardized achievement test each spring.

The positive and relatively large effects on the math and reading achievement of the non-gifted high achievers was concentrated among free and reduced-price lunch students and black and Hispanic students. There was also a small positive effect on the writing scores of Plan B gifted students - especially boys and students at schools with high fractions of students who were eligible for free and reduced-price lunches.

The authors note that Plan B gifted students tended to be "underachievers" because their scores on standardized tests were more like those of the high achievers and were low relative to their scores on tests of cognitive ability. They note that it is possible that the program had a negligible impact on the test scores of Plan A gifted students because it is difficult to raise the scores of students who are already performing in the top percentiles. This argument is less compelling for Plan B students whose scores, like those of the high achievers, had ample room for improvement.

Based on interviews with teachers, the authors speculate that many Plan B students may have lacked non-cognitive traits, such as attention-to-task and a willingness to meet social expectations. Such traits may have helped high achievers perform well on standardized tests of routine knowledge despite their lower IQ scores. Differences in these traits may explain why high achievers benefitted more from gifted classes than the Plan B students, and may also explain why Plan B students reported lower satisfaction with the gifted classroom environment than either the Plan A students or the high achievers.

-- Linda Gorman
The Digest is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution of source.

1824 Wilton Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
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