New School Year, New Gifted Programs At Talawanda

BY BLAIR DONOVAN
Miami journalism student

Talawanda schools now have a different system for evaluating gifted students after the Ohio Department of Education changed their operating standards for gifted education.

Originally, the district only used recommendations from parents, students, or faculty to determine gifted students. With this new mandate, the district will have to give gifted tests to all students in entire grades starting this fall. The state divides grades into three bands: grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. The mandate requires Talawanda to pick one entire grade within each band to test for giftedness, so they chose second, fifth, and seventh grades.

Joan Stidham, Director of Teaching and Learning, thinks the new policy will help detect gifted children who might have gone unnoticed with the recommendation system. She says they chose the three specific grades to help students schedule for classes in the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

“We begin serving students in gifted in third grade, so it makes sense to identify them before grade three,” said Stidham. “It makes sense in fifth grade so we have data for them for middle school, and then in seventh we do the same thing. You can use those scores for a few years, so we can use that data when they schedule for high school.”

By law, the district has to recognize gifted students but is not required to serve them. Stidham says Talawanda chooses to serve gifted students to the best of its ability. According to Jessica Moore, Coordinator of Gifted Services, about 10-15 percent of the student population in the district is considered gifted. However, the new mandate is unfunded. Stidham estimates it will cost the district $17,000 for the three grade levels, which Moore says will come out of the school district budget.

“It does take time away from classroom instruction and requires funding, but we’ll make the most of it and comply and put that data in teachers’s hands,” said Stidham.

At the high school level, gifted courses for visual and performing arts will now be offered. Changes in report cards instigated this. According to Moore, in the past few years, Talawanda schools have added gifted indicators to their report cards. The district is required to meet set gifted thresholds in all areas, including the arts.

Moore says they’re looking at students who excel in visual and performing arts because they don't get many gifted course requests.

“We do offer Advance Placement visual art and we’re trying to see how some of our current classes fit that model,” said Moore. “In order to be a gifted class, it has to have some sort of audition. It has to meet minute requirements, which are 225 a week.”

Moore thinks new gifted course will give teachers the opportunity to provide an enriching and exciting curriculum, and students gifted in visual and performing arts can now be recognized in their areas of talent.

--Photo by Blair Donovan