Abstract
The news has been full of stories related to remote, hybrid, and socially distanced instruction and their effects on students’ failing grades. Surveys indicate that during the pandemic, as many as 50% of students have not received passing grades on assessments. Students are struggling with the content, worried about falling behind, and very anxious. As I hear these reports, I wonder, “Should grades really be the benchmark for learning progress? What do grades tell us about what students already know, need to know, or their interests?”
This focus on grades to determine progress reminded me of my daughter’s experiences with a middle school English teacher. She had been identified as gifted at the elementary level and had always made good grades. Suddenly, on her first test in English, she received a “D.” She was heartbroken and very upset, wondering what she needed to do. I told her I would schedule a conference with her teacher to see how we might work together in improving her performance. At the conference, I asked the teacher to tell me about what my daughter needed to learn so that we might work on specific knowledge and skills at home. He looked at me and said, We don’t keep track of knowledge and skills at the middle school, we assign grades based on the student’s performance relative to others in the class. This is what they need to learn before they go to college. Teachers keep track of skills only at the elementary level.
Unfortunately, grades did not tell me or my daughter what she needed to learn.
Given the limited direction grades provide for teachers and parents and the emotions associated with their assignment, it may be more productive for educators to focus on tailoring curriculum for students based on their strengths, needs, and interests; differentiating assessments; and teaching students how to monitor their own learning progress. While certainly difficult during a pandemic, more individualized or personalized learning will be critical as students return to more consistent in-person instruction. The articles in this issue focus on this important task of tailoring instruction for students using differentiated learning designs, asking parents about their children’s strengths and interests, and aligning program services with assessments.
In the first feature, Walker, Bower, and Kettler studied nine preadolescent participants who demonstrated high achievement in reading comprehension. Through their interviews, they found that the participants described out-of-school reading as more relevant than structured school reading and school reading as unchallenging and unmemorable. The students also connected their identity exploration to their reading choices. They concluded that these advanced readers may require more differentiated learning designs that require examining ability, support, opportunity, and social learning.
Along with other questions related to testing and identification, Mollenkopf, Matyo-Cepero, Lewis, Irwin, and Joy asked parents of gifted and twice exceptional students to describe their child’s unique talents and strengths. They found that they were not only able to provide examples of their child’s abilities in academic areas but also identify areas of interest as early as age 1 or 2 years. Parents played an important role in their child’s identification and services, matching their child’s level of performance to learning activities.
In the final feature, Peters, Makel, and Rambo-Hernandez describe the creation of local norms as part of the gifted identification process to increase the equity of advanced educational programs and services while also helping schools challenge a wider range of learners. They argue if the goal of gifted education is to determine who is most likely to require some kind of additional challenge beyond general education then it should come as little surprise that who is identified and might need services will vary across schools. Most importantly, services should vary based on the needs of individual students.