Educators to address gifted access at Saturday summit

Dozens of suburban and statewide educators will come together this weekend to talk about underserved gifted populations.

A summit - organized by Elgin Area School District U-46, the Illinois Association for Gifted Children, and Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development - will run from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Saturday at Roycemore School, 1200 Davis St., Evanston. It will feature four sessions and a panel discussion with about 150 educators expected to attend.

Underserved populations include African-American, Latino and low-income students who are disproportionately represented in gifted programs, said April Wells, U-46's coordinator of gifted programs, academies, Advanced Placement, and world languages.

The goal of the summit is to raise awareness that talented students exist among these groups and to help educators overcome their biases about who qualifies as gifted, Wells said.

Some suburban school districts have developed more complex gifted and talented screening processes.

U-46 redesigned its gifted program in the 2012-13 school year with the goal of identifying underserved populations and improving access. The state's second-largest school district serving more than 40,000 students adopted universal screening, assessing students in third grade to determine gifted and talented program placement, and again in sixth grade to measure progress. The district offers a talent development program for second- and third-graders before students enter the gifted program in fourth grade.

"We are comparing students to students who are from comparable backgrounds ... providing opportunities for them to continue to develop their talents while we remedy any skill gaps that exist," said Wells, who serves on the state board and will speak at the summit. "Our students who have come from diverse backgrounds on many occasions have some barriers in the early learning process. I hope that educators will suspend their disbelief around their ideas of ability and embrace new understanding about students from diverse backgrounds."

Challenges disadvantaged students face include not having the resources or access to supplemental programs, and cultural and linguistic barriers.

Education advocacy group One Chance Illinois released a report earlier this year contending gifted black and Hispanic students in Illinois are not getting the same academic opportunities as their white and Asian peers. The nonprofit examined gifted education programs in a sampling of unit and elementary school districts statewide showing minority and low-income students are not being given equal opportunity to enroll in gifted programs. The report can be viewed online at dailyherald.com.

Wells said only five states - Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon and Wyoming - report high-achieving students as a subgroup and separately report their results at the school level on report cards. That's something she would like to see changed in Illinois with the new education accountability law, Every Student Succeeds Act, to be implemented next school year.

Summit speakers include: Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, director of the Center for Talent Development and a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University; Debra Hill, a university professor, retired public school teacher and superintendent of West Northfield School District 31 in Northbrook; and Carol Horn, K-12 program coordinator of Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

Online registration is closed but interested educators can register on-site Saturday morning. The same organizations will sponsor a workshop on April 22 at South Elgin High School focusing on instructional and classroom strategies for underserved gifted populations.