Authentic Education for GATE Class
Assessment Standards for Gifted Students
Educators are recognizing the instructional skills that recognize gifted students' multiple learning styles and intelligences that are needed to ensure mastery.
Traditionally, many gifted classes are stand-alone enrichment programs. But, does that mean they shouldn’t also have the benefit of integrated core subject curricula when and where the teacher deems it appropriate? Should GATE classes be totally about enrichment, or should they try at some points to enhance the core lessons in a manner that works with gifted students? And if that is the case, how do you evaluate the learning?
When GATE teachers ask the question about assessment and progress towards standards, they need to keep in mind some fundamental issues surrounding curriculum and instruction: what do we want the students to know and what do we want them to do with this knowledge. This is an important interpretation because the standards schools create will need to be defined, or embedded, within the state and local curricula.
Authentic Education
There have been several dramatic advances in the understanding of assessment techniques in American education over the past decade, and gifted education classes need to be a part of that progress. There is a movement away from the one-time, pencil and paper test to a more "authentic" form of assessment. The emphasis is shifted from the final outcomes that a student produces to the processes by which a student learns. While this kind of framework can directly conflict with the NCLB Act, educators are seeing a movement away from isolated skills to a more integrated cognitive approach that collects quality works over a long period of time. We are not asking, "How is Johnny doing compared to Billy?" as much as we are asking, "How is Johnny doing compared to what he should be doing at his advanced developmental level?"
There is fundamentally nothing new about this notion; the methodologies have been around for years. The question now is whether they can be applied to gifted classes, and if so, will those classes then fall under the NCLB standards? This kind of assessment program concerns some parents and community members, which is why teachers see the critical need to provide an assessment agenda which is as descriptive as possible, and is also as reliable and valid as traditional methods.
This does not mean that everything that has been done for the past fifty years is in a state of disrepair and needs to be scraped. On the contrary, some of the traditional assessment approaches are highly effective as one of the tools for assessing the big picture of where a gifted student's true level of performance is perching. States are evaluating their assessment programs and some significant changes could take effect within the next few years. For example, State tests can be rotated yearly synthesizing traditional tests such as the PEP and PET tests with local portfolio assessments. In the best of situations, in addition to core competencies, educators can focus on gifted students learning by identifying competency skills that are key to living and meet their needs such as problem solving, communicating, team building, and reasoning. But, once again the time needed to prepare for large scale, high-stakes testing can evaporate any efforts such as these.
