INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING
POLICY BRIEF
January 2005 Policy Brief # 7
Investing in Advanced Learners Dr. Linda Forsyth Weidenhamer ISPU Fellow
It is urgent for policymakers to understand 1980s that America’s successes in why they must immediately retool and scientific achievement were heavily generously fund state and national dependent upon foreigners who studied at It is urgent for education policies to find and develop American universities, then remained and policymakers to America’s gifted and advanced learners. worked in the United States. understand why they must immediately THE PROBLEM: Critical Newsweek magazine’s Fareed Zakaria retool and generously Underinvestment in Gifted and called this phenomenon “the dirty secret fund state and Advanced Learners about our scientific edge” in his national education commentary on the dramatic decline in the policies to find and Leading news writers and commentators enrollment of foreign students in American undergraduate and graduate programs develop the United have begun to uncover what advocates of gifted and talented education have long “Americans don’t do science anymore,” States’ gifted and known: that America’s scientific edge has Zakaria wrote. According to a National advanced learners. been produced in significant part by Science Board (NSB) report published this foreigners and immigrants. For at least the year, the United States ranks 17th among past decade, doctoral degrees awarded in nations surveyed in the proportion of engineering, the hard sciences, and college students who major in science and mathematics have been earned by foreign engineering, whereas it ranked 3rd in students in large numbers, often exceeding 1975.1 the number earned by American-born students. These students enter our most In a recent talk on Intelligence elite universities, academically prepared Reorganization, covered by C-SPAN, and personally disciplined to accomplish Professor Fred Hitz from the University of studies in the most intellectually demanding Virginia called for serious “area studies” 43151 Dalcoma Road, Suite 6 fields. I remember my colleague in the programs and more offerings of difficult Clinton Township Michigan 48038 Gifted and Talented Education Office at the languages for American students at the 586-416-1150 www.ispu.us California Department of Education, Dr. university level. Dr. Hitz was a CIA Paul Plowman, wryly noting in the mid- Inspector-General from1990-1998.
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
Professor Hitzs’ orientati on is national States is losing an important source of security andit is throug h that lense that that innovation, as it suffers from its Dr. Linda Forsyth Weidenhamer is an he views the undereducation of long-time policy of benign neglect of its Adjunct Scholar at the Institute for Social American students as a serious national own brainpower. Policy ad Understanding. problem. Since it will be America’s
advanced learners who take these What is happening here? First, we are Dr. Weidenhamer he lped develop the 1979 courses at the university level, I argue experiencing a plunge in the number of Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) law that the problem is the underpreparation superbly prepared foreign students and in later years wrote proposed of these students in our public schools, entering our top universities in the most amendments that would strengthen that kindergarten through grade 12. difficult, but necessary, fields of study, law, working with the Department of where notably smaller and smaller Education and the California Association On November 23, 2004, Lou Dobbs, percentages of Americans are willing for the Gifted. From 1984 until mid-1990, who has been covering the outsourcing and able to enter. Second, we are she served as the Administrative of American jobs on his nightly news experiencing a shift of research and Consultant for the Gifted and Talented show, Lou Dobbs Tonight (CNN), heard development talent in the sciences, Education (GATE) Unit, which was a report from CNN reporter Lisa technology, and engineering fields to responsible for the GATE funds and Sylvester, stating that American places outside the United States. Third, programs. She co-authored and co- students “are lagging behind the rest of we are reaping the consequences of our managed implementation of a William and the world in the maths and sciences,” shortsighted national education policies. Flora Hewlett Foundation grant to train and that the latest wav e of outsourcing What can the United States do to teachers to infuse critical thinking (informal is in the intellectual domain. Large mitigate the damage to security and logic) into the core curriculum, and later corporations, she reported, are able to general welfare, as we face the nasty managed a Department of Education hire lawyers in India for one quarter the consequences of a mismatch between research project on the same subject. cost of those in the United States.2 The our nation’s acute needs and our While teaching in the Folsom-Cordova orientation here is economic, as the willingness to put serious money and Unified School District, she served as problem is the ever-risi ng cost of higher clear policy behind our top students? It president of the teacher's union, education in the United States, even as is time to treat this matter as an urgent chairperson of the District's Policy Advisory access to Pell Grants and other federal one. Committee, and member of the negotiation higher-education investme nt diminishes. team that piloted the "interest-based" Thus, salaries for highly educated negotiation method. She served as SOME BACKGROUND Americans who have large student president and vice-president of the loans and lost earning time must be high Sacramento Area Gifted Association and This would not be the first time our enough to make it wo rth the effort and as a director on the State Board of nation has felt a sense of urgency about financial investment to secure the California Association for the Gifted (CAG). the need to invest in advanced and necessary training. Yet, corporations of In 1991, at the Department of Education, gifted students. The 1983 publication, A global reach are financi ally rewarded by she organized and administered the Nation at Risk: The Imperative for outsourcing even well-paid, intellectually federally funded Service-Learning Educational Reform, by the National demanding jobs. This adds to the programs, which began under President Commission on Excellence in complexity of provid ing a sufficient, George H. Bush. In 1994, she was Education, is as salient today as it was highly educated talent pool of investors, appointed to be the first Director of the then, in stating that “Our nation is at researchers, and entrepreneurs for the California Commission on Improving Life risk….Our once unchallenged United States to remai n competitive and Through Service by Gov. Pete Wilson, preeminence in commerce, industry, secure in tomorrow’s world. where she established and managed the science, and technological innovation is federally funded AmeriCorps program being overtaken by competitors throughout the state. Dr. Weidenhamer We are told that our economy will throughout the world.” The Commission earned her Ph.D. in Political Science and recover because of Am erican innovation defined excellence and set a goal for Education from the University of California, - because of our lead in research and our schools that should guide us today: Berkeley. development of new ideas and new products that bring new jobs. This We define “excellence” to policy brief argues that the United mean several related things.
2
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
At the level of the individual part philosophical and part political. The learner, it means performing on fear of elitism and the reality of political the boundary of individual pressure to attend to closing the gap ability in ways that test and quote of various constituencies within push back personal limits, in the student population caused school and in the workplace. legislators and State education administrators to focus attention and Our goal must be to develop dollars on the ba sis of ethnicity, race, the talents of all to their fullest. language, and socio-economic status, rather than co mmitting to the Attaining that goal requires that development of every child to his or her we expect and assist all fullest academic potential. Because students to work to the limits of attention follows funding, and because their capabilities. 3 so many school districts in California experienced imme nse and rapid growth Leading news writers In 1957, following the Soviet Union’s in the numbers of non-English speaking successful launching of Sputnik, the and special-needs students, the districts and commentators United States realized the need for simply could no t sustain the many excellent programs for gifted and have begun to urgent action to develop a large cadre of future scientists. Both the nation and advanced learners that had begun in the uncover what several states responded to the nation’s 1960s and had ex panded through the early 1980s. call to produce more scientists with advocates of gifted federal Eisenhower and National and talented Science Foundation grants to develop THE ISSUES: Egalitarianism, science programs and several state Politics, and Dep endence on Foreign education have long programs for mentally gifted minors. For Students instance, in 1962, a 1,000-pupil known: that research project formed the basis for The issue of unde rvaluing the education Americas’ scientific establishing the Mentally Gifted Minor of advanced learners is tied to the (MGM) program in California, with national “value” of egalitarianism, with a edge has been sufficient state funding to at least stir a concomitant disdain for “elitism,” both of majority of the more than 1,000 school these realities have fed into the produced in districts to compete for MGM funds. In emergence of inter est-group politics as significant part by 1979, after revision and expansion, the forces in the educ ation policies of the MGM program became the Gifted and United States. foreigners and
Talented Education (GATE) program to immigrants. enable identification of a broader Americans have a love-hate relationship population of students. There was an with extraordinary students, from agreement that the state would increase kindergarten throu gh high school. They its funding to match the expansion of are suspicious of those who are identification and program costs under perceived as “better than” during the K- new GATE programs. 12 school years, yet those who are successful as creators of new In the case of California, the State never knowledge, new artistic contribution, seemed to gather the will to fund these and new products that enhance our lives programs fully. An average of just are venered for their extraordinary under $100 per year per identified pupil achievement. The results are was not sufficient to ensure proper celebrated, but the “getting there” is a placements, continuous progress, and overwhelmingly long unsupported development of advanced curricula for struggle for the gifted and talented the identified pupils. The problem was student.
3
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
Politicians, such a s the elected seeks and rewards intellectual Superintendents of Pub lic Instruction, risk-taking; and must necessarily consider political pressures, including this fear of elitism, (5) Provide opportunities for that influence educati on policy to the and lessons that teach detriment of getting the job done with character development. those students whose impact on the country’s future is the greatest. Not We have had trouble ensuring that sufficiently “getting the job done” is a these principles are put into practice. reality that has long been disguised by For 20 years, public education as a the blessing of foreign undergraduate system has been subjected to research and graduate students who come well- and solution ideas that have had more prepared to work hard and earn degrees to do with interest-group politics than in the most challenging subject areas. with practical education policy. There is For many of these stud ents, the United pressure to affirm the equality of all, States has been the land of opportunity. which is offered as a primary The current definition Life here was good, and many of the assumption behind the practice of of school success is graduate students re mained here to placing all students in heterogeneous make enormous contributions to our groupings the entire instructional day. not how well schools nation. It was easy to delude ourselves Gifted Education advocates call this the that our schools were world class in model of “unpaid teacher’s aides,” since move willing and able terms of “results” at the top end of the so many of the gifted and advanced students ahead to continuum. They were not. And we are learners spend their days helping other in trouble. students, rather than operating at the greater mastery of boundaries of their own capabilities. There are five basic pri nciples that are The current definition of school success the curriculum; it is, particularly salient wh en decisions are is not how well schools move willing and rather, determined by made about the educa tion at the upper able students ahead to greater mastery end of the continuum of American of the curriculum; it is, rather, the number of students. Our public sc hools must: determined by the number of students who test at a minimum level of success students who test at (1) Allow students to for each grade. We may attempt to a minimum level of continuously progress and leave no child behind and to “close the advance under a challenging gap,” but it must not be at the expense success for curriculum; of moving no gifted child ahead. Put each grade. another way, it is folly to fill in our (2) Provid e appropriate valleys by cutting off our mountaintops. placements that are determined solely by the Funding determines policy at the state academic progre ss and needs and district levels. Billions of federal of students; and state dollars are poured into helping low-achieving students. For example, of (3) Adopt a challenging core the 100 categorical special needs curriculum and use programs managed by the California instructional practices that Department of Education over the past teach and elic it critical thinking, 20 years, only one was aimed at reasoned judgment, and identifying and serving the advanced creative problem solving; learners through the State’s Gifted and Talented Education law. (4) Provide an atmosphere that
4
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
There was and is today no serious Department and Congress, federal investment beyond small grants should accelerate the limited number of small grants to states processing of foreign student to provide for the academic success of visas and wor k with universities our most advanced learners, including to maintain oversight of the the highly gifted. This leaves the visiting student s; national investment in the nation’s future “brain power” to the happenstance of (2) Congress and the President particularly determined and energetic should imm ediately fund a leadership at the state and local levels. large numb er of full “Manhattan There is simply no national or state Project” scholarships for high- systemic, lasting, and assured focus on achieving American students America’s advanced learners today. who commit to a program of And, as we have seen since 9-11, the study, undergraduate and number of foreign students seeking graduate, in areas that are university education in the United States particularly salient to the is plunging. We ask, then, where do we security and economic go from here? competitivene ss of this nation; and
Nothing is more evident today than the fact that the economic, military, and philosophical wars of the present and future are fought
on the front of the developed and applied intelligence of our people.
THE THREE-LEGGED STOOL (3) Congress should pass a SOLUTION: An Education National Ad vanced Learners “Manhattan Project” bill, the development of which would be overseen by the The three legs on the stool of our urgent Education Department, that “Manhattan Project” in education provides an array of services comprise a set of solutions which, when for students who are at the taken together, assure achievement of upper end of the continuum, our nation’s research and development, academical ly and intellectually. our security, and our general welfare
goals. These include the following: RECOMMENDATIONS
(1) To achieve the short-term goal What would an Advanced Learners of maintaining a large pool of Program look like? Such a program scientists, linguists, engineers, should not only incl ude the identified mathematicians, and others in gifted students, where those students high-talent fields, the federal may currently be identified and served, government, namely, the State but should also include services to the school district and services to students
5
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
not identified as gifted, but who are clearly academically high-achieving. In 2) Services to Willing and Able other words, an Advanced Learners Students Program should serve the “willing and The Advanced Learner Program will able” students, and should help the include services to students who have school district leaders develop, not been formally identified for a implement, evaluate, and improve district’s gifted and talented education programs aimed at a student population program, if one has been available. they have long regarded as not needing Services to students who are willing and much attention. able to achieve in a demanding
curriculum include: 1) Services to the School District Rapid Learner classes or The bill should assume that districts will placements, K-8 require considerable retooling and administrative help in several ways. Honors classes Today, we are Services to the district should include the following: Advanced Placement classes acutely aware that Staff Development International Baccalaureate our nation’s schools Programs are among the tools Accountability for advanced learner goals and achievement Situational identification needed for placements in rapid learner Policy design for gifted and classes or groupings that can maintaining our advanced learners to assure not only be used to watch nation’s security. continuous progress and students’ reactions to the appropriate placement curriculum delivered with faster pacing, greater complexity Curriculum development and (which uses diversity of higher articulation (good targets might level resources), and in-depth be a smooth transition into an study. Situational placements International Baccalaureate may also serve as a Program at grade 11, or to a springboard to GATE large number of Advanced identification, giving access to Placement courses, or to an additional services. early college attendance) Extension of innovative Access to magnet programs programs and learning throughout the district, strategies to regular regardless of students’ local- classrooms. These programs school designations in large and strategies can be modified districts to work well in the regular classroom environment. Pilots for inno vative programs 3) Services to Identified Gifted and Coordination with other federal- Talented Students and state-funded education The Advanced Learner Program will programs. include services to students who have been identified or could be eligible for
6
INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL POLICY AND UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
services under a state or local gifted and for both standing and security in the world talented education program. This group of if we do not develop the potentials of our students includes exceptionally highly own youth to assure our own supply of gifted students for whom even advanced new ideas, new products and technology, Previous Policy Briefs from ISPU classes are not sufficient. Services to excellent management, and wise include: identified gifted and exceptionally talented leadership. students include the array of advanced
learning placements and classes listed Today, we are acutely aware that our TheHTU Bleeding of Iraq and the Rising above, plus: nation’s schools are among the tools Insurgency UTH Mentorships needed for maintaining our nation’s Dr. Fawaz Gerges security. Nothing is more evident today ISPU Adjunct Scholar Independent study than the fact that the economic, military, and philosophical wars of the present and
Individual study plan future are fought on the front of the TheHTU 2004 Presidential Elections: What developed and applied intelligence of our people. If we are to succeed, we must Should American Muslims Do? UTH Radical acceleration Dr. Muqtedar Khan overcome bias against elitism and the ISPU Fellow Simultaneous college enrollment tendency to over-bureaucratize procedures that bring the world’s most Counseling talented young people into our country.
FosterHTU Care: A National Problem UTH Seminars Dr. Paul Toro ______ISPU Fellow
A free public education system was Footnotes: established in this country to promote the
general welfare and the blessings of 1 TheHTU Greater Middle East Initiative: Off P P Newsweek, November 29, 2004. liberty, and in time, the philosophy that to a Shaky Start UTH each individual ought to develop his or her 2 P P Loub Dobbs Tonight, November 23, Farid Senzai unique potentials to the fullest. This leg of 2004, 6:00p.m. EST, CNN. ISPU Fellow the stool sets up a system of programs,
training, and accountability measures to 3 generate a permanent investment in our P P A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for most talented youth. Investment is the Educational Reform, published by the key word here. We lose the competition National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983, p. 4. All ISPU Policy Briefs are
available on our website www.ispu.us
ISPU normally does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views presented here do not necessarily reflect the views of ISPU, its officers, staff or trustees. ©2004 -2005 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
7
INSTI INSTTITUTEUTE FOR FO RSOCIAL SOCIAL PO POLICYLICY AND AND UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING POLICY BRIEF
The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) is an independent and nonprofit organization committed to solving critical social problems in the United States through education, research, training, and policy analysis. ISPU provides cutting-edge analysis and policy solutions through publications, public events, media commentary, and community outreach. Major areas of focus include domestic politics, social policy, the economy, health, education, the environment, and foreign policy. Since our inception in 2002, ISPU’s research has worked to increase understanding of key public policy issues and how they impact various communities in the United States.
US society is far from being monolithic, whether culturally, socially or politically. It is therefore imperative that the thoughts and insights of each aspect of this heterogeneity play a contributory role in the discourse and debate of issues that affect all Americans. ISPU was established and premised on this idea – that each community must address, debate, and contribute to the
pressing issues facing our nation. It is our hope that this effort will give voice to creative new All ISPU Policy Briefs are ideas and provide an alternative perspective to the current policy-making echelons of the political, available on our website academic and public-relations arenas of the United States. www.ispu.us
ISPU firmly believes that optimal analysis and treatment of social issues mandates a comprehensive study from several different and diverse backgrounds. As social challenges become more complex and interwoven, ISPU is unique in its ability to bring this new approach to the human and social problems facing our country. Through this unique approach, ISPU will produce scholarly publications, incorporating new voices and adding diversity to the realm of ideas. Our multidisciplinary work in partnership with universities and other research institutes serves to build understanding and create programs that effect lasting social change.
Further information about ISPU can be obtained from our website at www.ispu.us
Institute for Social Policy and Understanding 43151 Dalcoma Road, Suite 6 Clinton Township, Michigan 48038
8