Students may perform better academically if they are treated as gifted, according to a recent U.S. Department of Education study of a North Carolina program.
The research is an evaluation of Project Bright Idea, a program that ran from 2004 to 2009 in North Carolina and was designed to increase the number of children from underserved populations in gifted and academically challenging programs.
Between 15 and 20 percent of the 5,000 kindergarten through second-grade students who participated in the program met their district’s criteria as academically gifted within three years compared to 10 percent of the 5,000 students in a control group. The students who participated in Project Bright Idea were from 11 North Carolina school districts that received federal funding for low-income students.
The premise behind the program originally came from a report for the North Carolina State Board of Education in 2001 compiled by William Darity, chair of African and African American studies at Duke. The report studied the lack of participation of kids from underrepresented groups in accelerated educational tracks, Darity said.
“Giftedness is associated with a set of behaviors,” Darity said. “Everyone can develop these sets of behaviors. It is something that can be nurtured—it’s not innate.”
Margaret Gayle, director of the American Association for Gifted Children at Duke, co-designed Project Bright Idea more than 10 years ago because Darity’s report reflected the need for change in school curricula. She aimed to create “nurturing programs” to expose all children to a higher level of thinking at a young age rather than assume some students are more capable than others. In these programs, students are obligated to speak in complete sentences at all times and participate in activities often reserved for older children, such as debates.
Project Bright Idea emphasizes teaching “gifted intelligent behaviors” compiled from prominent researchers who study behavioral patterns in the field of talent identification and education, Gayle said. Teachers in the program undergo three years of intense re-training that addresses classroom techniques and expectations about students’ potential.
“Part of our work is changing teacher dispositions of students,” Gayle said. “They don’t challenge them because they don’t believe these kids can do these things.”
The results may impact the long-term planning of elementary school curricula.
“It has really shown us that children can learn at very high levels when teachers can teach these behaviors,” said Mary Watson, principal investigator for the project and director of the Exceptional Children Division of the Public Schools of North Carolina. “It’s a transformational model for improving scores for all students.”
Two North Carolina schools, Northeast Elementary in Kinston and Town Creek Elementary in Winnabow, have continued the teachings in a program now called Project Bright Tomorrow.
Terry Cline, superintendent of Lenoir County schools, said he implemented the program when he first came to the district in 2004, and since then the program has scaled up into higher grades and into a middle school.
“These are high-minority, low-income schools where people haven’t expected a lot,” Cline said. “But this [program] has changed our whole school system. Scores have gone up, the students’ language is different and it has helped build thinking skills.”
The program impacts children immediately, Cline noted. Northeast Elementary School, a Project Bright Tomorrow school in the district, has seen a nearly 20 point increase in its end-of-grade exams since the program’s inception.
These results have compelled educators to take the program seriously and spurred interest throughout North Carolina and in other states to implement similar curriculums.
“I’ve had other states express interest,” Watson said. “This may be our next step.”
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