D.C. Public Schools is rolling out its first gifted-and-talented program in two middle schools this fall, The Washington Examiner has learned.
After testing for a year at Hardy Middle School in Georgetown and Kelly Miller Middle School in Lincoln Heights, school officials say they are hoping to expand the program — which does not require a student to test in — to schools throughout the District.
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The schools will use the University of Connecticut–created Schoolwide Enrichment Model, which allows any student recommended by a parent, teacher or other staffer to participate. Classroom lessons won’t change, but a “gifted resource teacher,” identified by principals and trained over the summer, will pull students out of class for special projects on a subject-to-subject basis.
It’s a different turn for the city’s schools; data-driven reforms have been focused on bringing up low test scores. Now, school officials say they need to stimulate the District’s top students, and, in the process, stave off the flight from DCPS to charter and private schools that historically occurs in middle school grades.
“I think in terms of the work we’ve been doing, we’re poised for this now,” said Carey Wright, chief academic officer for DCPS, noting the new English curriculum that was rolled out this fall.
Hardy and Kelly Miller are very different schools, which Wright says was deliberate. Hardy is one of the best in the city, with 82 percent of students scoring “proficient” or “advanced” on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System reading test last spring. Just 1 percent of students at Kelly Miller, an underenrolled Ward 7 school, performed in the “advanced” rung, while 23 percent scored “proficient.”
Abdullah Zaki, principal of Kelly Miller, said he recognized that there was still work to be done to bring most of Kelly Miller’s students up to grade level, but pointed to the 24 percent of students who might benefit from extra enrichment in reading.
“All students of all ethnici ties, regardless of where you come from, have the ability to achieve at high levels, and all students require some amount of differentiation — whether they’re two or three grade levels below or two or three or four grade levels above,” Zaki said.
