Two schools of thought

By Emily Richmond

Friday, June 27, 2003 | 5:39 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 28-29, 2003

Last summer, after a lot of consideration, Mike and Karen Welch made a change that they now regret.

They decided to enroll their daughter Shannon into the second grade at Cox Elementary School just a few blocks from their Henderson home. Shannon had earned straight A's in the first grade at her private Christian academy.

"But I heard wonderful things about Cox, how everyone in the neighborhood really rallied around the school and the kids," Karen Welch said. "Plus, there was the possibility of the gifted and talented program, which her private school didn't have."

Shannon was tested for the Gifted and Talented Education program, GATE, earlier this year and qualified. She was supposed to begin the program -- in which students are pulled out of regular classrooms for special instruction during the day -- when she returned to Cox in August for the start of third grade.

Instead, the program, which serves about 6,000 students at a cost of $7.7 million annually, has been suspended while Clark County School District officials await the outcome of the Nevada Legislature's special session and final decision on school funding for the 2003-04 academic year. And the Welches have been left wondering whether they made a mistake in trusting public education.

"If my child were autistic, the district would have to teach her, or (it) could be sued," Welch said. "Should I sue the school district because my child isn't going to be challenged?"

The debate over education funding isn't just about dollars. It's also about what the role of public schools should be.

Some say the primary function of public education is to get as many students as possible to demonstrate basic proficiency. Others argue schools have an obligation to guide students to their highest possible achievement level and provide programs and services to support that effort.

Clark County School Superintendent Carlos Garcia said he believes that every child must be nurtured -- even in the nation's sixth-largest school district.

"That's the core of what we stand for," Garcia said. "That's why what's happening right now is so galling. We're being forced to ax innovations we know are making a difference in children's lives.

"Everyone likes to say they're in favor of more money for education, but when it comes down to actually doing something no one wants to step up and pay for it."

Money is the issue for the district. With federal requirements increasing, frills are limited. And, even if it's only for a short time, that could affect the future of education in Southern Nevada.

"We don't want a generation of students who haven't been given the opportunity to appreciate music, to develop the teamwork skills that come from playing sports, to do the kind of creative thinking that the GATE program encourages," said Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, a former special-education teacher. "They're all important parts of the whole and none of these children should be shortchanged."

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to meet tougher national standards for basic education. And, for the first time, schools must include scores from special-education students and non-native English-speaking students in the overall tally and show yearly progress for all groups.

The penalties for failure to do so range from a loss of funding to being taken over by the state, according to Michael Griffiths, a policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, a national research clearing house.

While the federal act has brought with it some increases in funding, much of the cost falls to states and local districts, Griffiths said.

"In a perfect world with plenty of funding, no one's going to argue with GATE," he said. "But when the pressure's on, it's the programs for the high-achievers that are the first to go."

The reassignment of the GATE teachers wasn't a dismissal of the importance of the program but an acknowledgement that the "needs of the many sometimes outweigh the wants of the few," said Agustin Orci, Clark County deputy superintendent of instruction.

"We can't start the school year without a qualified teacher in every classroom, or we'll be out of compliance with the (federal) law," Orci said. "That's the bottom line for us -- everything else: GATE, reading teachers, everything, has to take a backseat to that."

Scenes similar to Clark County's are being played out in districts across the country where budget crunches are the norm and education funding continues to dip. In Oregon, New York, Maine, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Texas, Minnesota, California and Georgia, instructional programs for gifted students have been drastically cut or eliminated.

The fact that Clark County isn't alone is no consolation to Mike Welch, whose daughter may miss out on the GATE program.

"The message being sent to my daughter is that they don't want her to excel or challenge herself, that they don't want these kids to be doctors or scientists or future leaders," Welch said. "An average education is good enough."

Welch said before becoming a father he might have shared that perspective.

"I was probably as apathetic as everyone else before I had children," Welch said. "Now when I drive by a school and see the kids playing outside, I say to myself, 'There are the people who are going to be running the hospitals, the police department, the state. There are the people I'm going to be relying on to take care of me.' "

There's another element that frustrates Welch: the dollars the district spends on students who are not fluent in English. About 20 percent of the district's students are classified as English language learners, which qualifies them for special services. It should have been ELL teachers who were sent to regular classrooms, not GATE teachers, Welch said.

"If someone wants to come here and make a better life for themselves, I have no problem with that provided they do it legally," Welch said. "What I want to know is why so much of our tax dollars goes to illegal, non-English-speaking children."

But the two categories are not interchangeable, either in terms of how the programs are staffed or the district's obligations to provide the services, said Edward Goldman, superintendent of the district's southeast region.

The district spends about $11 million a year of its general funds on ELL programs, which are supplemented by state and federal dollars.

Federal law requires that public schools treat all students the same, regardless of immigration status, Goldman said.

"Once they enter our schools they're our kids, and we have an obligation to educate every one of them," Goldman said. "Some of our ELL kids need to learn to read and write in English before they can join a mainstream classroom and even begin to catch up to the rest of their classmates. But if a child doesn't attend GATE, he is not being deprived of the basic education that every other child gets. He is missing out on the extras."

There are other opportunities for gifted children to shine besides GATE, Goldman said. In middle schools there are accelerated classes, and in high school there are honors and advanced-placement programs. And if the Legislature does not approve a budget in time to return GATE teachers to their original assignments, district officials are looking at ways to offer after-school and weekend enrichment programs, Goldman said.

"We have an obligation to provide a challenging academic environment in some form," Goldman said. "If we tell our kids all they need to reach for is the basic requirements, that's what they'll do. But if we provide an opportunity to raise the bar, kids will rise to the levels of our expectations."

GATE's elimination can have serious consequences not only for students but also for entire communities, said Dr. Robert J. Sternberg, professor of psychology and education at Yale University and a leading researcher in the field of curriculum development for gifted children.

"If the upper-level offerings disappear, so do the children from more affluent families because their parents pull them out and put them in private school," Sternberg said. "Once schools lose that kind of diversity, they wind up worse off than they were before."

At the Meadows School, there has been a rise in the number of parents seeking information, founder and President Carolyn Goodman said, who added the school, with 700 students, is at capacity and has a waiting list.

The private, nonprofit school was founded 20 years ago by a group of parents frustrated by the lack of public education offerings. The group also had concerns about how tax dollars were being spent, Goodman said.

With all of its graduates enrolled at four-year colleges, the Meadows School "teaches to the top," she said.

"We set the bar very high, because we've found less-able students will look at what their peers are being asked to do and say, 'I can do that, too,' " she said. "Our classes are as much for them as for the high IQ child."

Gifted students often don't perform up to their full potential when left in regular classrooms and are more likely to drop out later on, Sternberg said.

In many countries, gifted students are identified early and placed in elite programs that groom them for leadership roles in a variety of fields, Sternberg said.

"(The top students) are seen as the most precious resource they have. They're the ones who are going to make a difference in society," he said. "But in the United States we do the opposite, we make those children a low priority. And people wonder why we have so many problems."

That doesn't mean that students who don't participate in gifted programs won't make important contributions later, Sternberg said. But he added that it makes sense to encourage children who show natural aptitudes early on.

"I understand funding shortages, I understand schools have tight budgets," Sternberg said. "But it's a shame when the kids are left scrounging for the crumbs."

Public backing for more school funding might improve if Nevada were not so consistently portrayed as being near the bottom in one national education report after another, said Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, a longtime education advocate who is a former PTA leader.

Support for special programs such as GATE is difficult to garner when there's a perception that the average student isn't getting the needed education, Cegavske said.

While the high school dropout rate has declined in recent years, student scores on reading and math remain below the national average, and a number of Nevada students who attend college wind up needing remedial courses, Cegavske said.

"We've reached a point where people want to see more accountability, they want to see tangible improvements instead of just throwing more money at the problem. I think people would be more enthusiastic if they knew their tax dollars were making a difference."

The Clark County demographics also work against securing extra funding for programs such as GATE, according to Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Economic and Business Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Of the 1.4 million Las Vegas Valley residents, just half have been for longer than 10 years, Schwer said adding that means people are less likely to have ties to the area or feel a sense of responsibility to the community as a whole.

Whether it's for music programs, athletics or extracurricular clubs, finding parents to back additional school funding is easy -- it's the adults without children or seniors who have already raised their families who require convincing, Schwer said.

"There has to be a level of self-interest at stake," Schwer said. "It's a question of people seeing children as belonging to all of us to a certain degree."

For older adults, who may have seen their children through public schools in other states decades earlier, it can be an even tougher sell, Schwer said.

Because America faced tough economic conditions at the time, many seniors in their 70s and 80s grew up working, Schwer said. Programs such as GATE were unheard of, as were most of the clubs and extra activities now considered standard in public schools.

"Everyone has preconceived notions based on their own childhood experiences, and if they were positive they expect the schools to replicate them," Schwer said. "The other side of the coin are those who demand something better for their children than what they themselves were able to obtain. There's no way of pleasing both sides, so the district is in a lose-lose situation."

The district's current approach is "clearly not working," Goodman said, and it may be time for an outside task force to investigate why.

She has been disappointed that no one from the district has ever asked to visit Meadows School or learn more about its educational philosophy, which places a heavy emphasis on parental involvement. About 18 percent of the student population comes from low-income families and their tuition is subsidized by the school, Goodman said.

"Every parent pays his own way," Goodman said. "They are personally invested in their child's education, and that's as critical as having the student come to class every day."

District officials seem swamped by the soaring student enrollment and ever-growing demands for services beyond standard classroom instruction, Goodman said.

The growing Hispanic population and needs of ELL students is not a surprise -- it's been predicted for decades, said Goodman, who noted Meadows students begin learning Spanish in an immersion program in kindergarten.

"The school district needs to get back to the basic formula: what are you trying to do, and who do you have implementing it," Goodman said. "Our kids are coming through the public schools and can't pass the proficiency test. Don't tell me it's the fault of the child. It's the fault of what's offered to them by the adults."

Orci said he is well acquainted with Meadows School's successes and its educational philosophy, but doubted there were significant lessons to be learned for Clark County's public schools.

"They (Meadows staff members) do a great job because they can control their class sizes, increase funding through tuition and limit the types of students they enroll," Orci said. "But we don't operate under the same conditions. We have to educate every single child who comes to us. Comparing us to the Meadows School would be comparing apples to oranges."

As for Goodman's suggestion of an outside task force, Orci said the district has always welcomed input from outside agencies and individuals.

Moises Denis, Nevada PTA treasurer, said he agreed that parents need to take an active role in their children's learning, both at home and in school. People sometimes become complacent, and it takes the spectre of losing programs such as GATE, music or athletics to spur them into action, he said.

The recent spate of parent rallies is encouraging, Denis said.

"We can't abdicate everything to the school district," Denis said. "I think some people are realizing it's going to take direct parental involvement for change to occur."

Even if GATE teachers and specialists return to their original assignments in August -- as district officials have said would be possible if the state's budget is finalized by July 1 -- parents such as the Welches say their confidence in the strength of public education has been rattled.

"If we really cared about children then school funding would never be on the chopping block. It would be considered off-limits," said Karen Welch. "What we're doing now is stabbing ourselves in the back, and the fact that people can't see that terrifies me."