Staying ahead of the curve

A picture of Albert Einstein hangs near the front of Carolyn Tanner’s classroom at Atlas Elementary School, complementing a poster stuck on a filing cabinet that states: “Even Einstein Asked Questions.” Words like “clamor,” “glean” and “prodigy” and their definitions, mounted on colored paper, stick to a wall. Actions like “set goals,” “see different points of view,” and “ponder” adorn another wall, completing the phrase “a scholar will …”

And scattered among the wall hangings and decorations is the work of the school’s “advanced learners” – the top performers selected for the advanced learning program. Students with high test scores in reading or math spend part of each day in the advanced learning classroom.

The program differs from those in nearby districts because it pulls the students out of regular classrooms each day rather than once a week. Spokane offers such an enrichment program for students in grades three through six, as well as a specialized school for gifted middle school students, honors classes at the regular middle schools, and honors and Advanced Placement courses for high school students.

The push for more opportunities for high achievers comes at a time when education policy experts are increasingly touting their benefits and calling for more grouping by ability at a younger age.

“When you group children by ability and you provide them a more difficult curriculum – a more advanced curriculum – they make additional learning gains,” said Jane Clarenbach, director of public education for the National Association for Gifted Children.

Ability grouping has also been an ingredient of successful charter and magnet schools, which gained ground in the past decade.

“It sounds like the school district recognizes that students who are advanced are advanced for more than just an hour a week,” Clarenbach continued.

Funding for advanced learning programs like Coeur d’Alene’s depends on local money. The state gives about $20,000 each year to the district from a federal grant that’s used to train teachers on advanced learning techniques. Other money is available for supplies and curriculum materials, but it doesn’t pay for the extensive program Coeur d’Alene offers.

The advanced learning program began in the last school year after voters approved a levy to fund opportunities for the district’s top students. The levy also funds Spanish and honors classes at middle schools and the International Baccalaureate diploma program at high schools – a series of rigorous college preparation courses that’s replacing Advanced Placement courses. The levy is up for renewal Tuesday. An optional $3 million increase to the $14.6 million levy would expand the program by putting additional program teachers in the high enrollment elementary schools to reduce the program’s class sizes there.

Spokane’s programs for advanced students are also dependent on a property tax levy, said Terren Roloff, spokeswoman for Spokane Public Schools.

Benefits for all students

For kids in the program, the benefits seem fairly simple.

“We just do more interesting things, and we go a little ahead,” explained 10-year-old Cole DeWitt, a student in Atlas’ advanced learning math program.

“If this wasn’t here, we’d be back in (the regular classroom), probably not learning as much,” added 9-year-old James Cronister.

School officials and education experts say the benefits of grouping students according to their ability are more far-reaching.

For about an hour each day, the advanced learning program reduces the size of regular classes and gives teachers more time for the other kids, said Glenda Armstrong, district coordinator for the program.

“The students who would maybe get more attention because they know the answers and are faster to respond are absent,” Clarenbach said.

The impetus behind the program was a lag in test scores from the district’s top students. They weren’t posting gains in test scores before this program, Armstrong said, but now they are. And those who stay in regular classes are showing gains, too.

“It’s phenomenal what it has done for these kids,” she said. “Growth has been made across the whole spectrum.”

The students follow the same curriculum being taught in the regular classroom, but they go at a faster pace, which creates time for extra projects.

Along with writing a book report, advanced reading program students might make a diorama of a scene from the book. In the advanced learning math class at Atlas, students are making bridges out of toothpicks. Weights will be put on the completed bridges. The strongest one wins.

“Faster, accelerated and richer” is how Tanner, the program coordinator at Atlas, describes the advanced learning curriculum.

At Winton Elementary School, students in Nancy Mueller’s fifth-grade advanced learning class set up a student store to raise money for classmate Kyle Mason’s trip to the state geography bee in Boise. The children were in charge of everything – ordering supplies, setting prices to make a profit, and taking inventory. Students also designed a dog park and presented the plans to the city.

The hands-on experience is one of 10-year-old Carly Glessner’s favorite things about the program.

“We have a lot more opportunities,” she said. “Usually in the regular class, we just do stuff with paper and pencil.”

Winton advanced learning students enjoy what the district hopes to bring to the larger schools with the extra money in Tuesday’s levy: smaller class sizes. Just 12 students are in the fourth-grade reading class; 10 are in the fifth-grade math class. At Atlas, which has nearly three times the students as Winton, class sizes hover in the high teens or low 20s.

Kids in the program say it has made school challenging, which Clarenbach said should be the hallmark for all gifted programs.

“By and large, we find that if gifted kids aren’t challenged, they get lazy,” she said. “School should not be easy for anyone; school should be challenging.”