Fall 2020

In this Issue . . . Director's Message | Equity and Inclusion in Education  | Equity and Inclusion in Practice

Director's Message: Addressing Equity and Promoting Talent Development

Opportunity gaps. Achievement gaps. Excellence gaps. Our nation is grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic and continuing to struggle with overt and systemic racism. Families across the U.S. struggle to earn a living, afford basic necessities, provide childcare, and homeschool their school-age children. These struggles are exacerbating issues of inequity and highlighting disparities in access to healthcare, resources, and educational opportunities.

More must be done to address issues of inequity endemic to our education system. Research shows the U.S. is producing fewer top achievers than other developed countries, and children from low-income families are sorely underrepresented in this group. Fewer of America’s 3.4 million high-ability, low-income K-12 students complete advanced degrees than their higher-income peers (Wyner, J. S., 2007). According to a recent study, students in affluent schools are more than twice as likely to participate in gifted programs. And these gaps are growing (Yaluma, C. B., 2020).

In this issue of Talent, we return to issues of equity and inclusion in conversation with Natalie Rodriguez Jansorn of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF) and look at approaches that are working, providing opportunities and creating talent development pathways for students. The Center for Talent Development has a longstanding relationship with the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF), which has been vital in our efforts to work with schools and educators, identify diverse expressions of talent, and expand access to advanced academic programming. In her role as Vice President of Scholarship Programs for JKCF, Jansorn works to combat the “excellence gap”—the economic disparity in students who reach advanced levels of education—by connecting high-performing, low-income students to high-quality programs and aid. The JKCF’s model of effective programming, extensive research, and grants have made a deep impact and shed light on various facets of the excellence gap.

As students return to school this fall, schools, educators, and families are dealing with important questions about how to keep students and teachers safe, how to address the “COVID slide,” and how to provide students with access to educational and technological resources. Let us also be sure to keep a focus on addressing inequities and rethinking how we provide access to opportunities for students develop their talents fully. 

Paula Olszewski-Kubilius
Director, Center for Talent Development

Wyner, J. S., Bridgeland, J. M. and DiIulio, J. J. (2007). Achievement Trap: How America is Failing Millions of High-Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families.

Yaluma, C. B. (2020). The “gifted gap” was already growing before the pandemic. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

 

Equity and Inclusion in Education

An Interview with Natalie Rodriguez Jansorn of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF)     

“Talent is equally distributed, but often opportunity is not,” notes Natalie Rodriguez Jansorn of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF). Jansorn is committed to helping exceptionally promising students who have financial need reach their potential. In her role as Vice President, Scholarship Programs, Jansorn oversees the JKCF’s scholar and alumni programming, which provides the largest scholarships in the country, comprehensive counseling, and other support services to students from grade 7 to graduate school.

Founded in 2000, the Foundation has awarded $200 million in scholarships to 2,700 students, and over $110 million in grants to organizations, including Center for Talent Development, for initiatives to support high-performing students from low-income families.

Factors Contributing to the “Excellence Gap”

Disparities in student access start from a young age and continue through college and beyond. Economically disadvantaged children are less prepared when they start school, and due to state budget cuts, the availability and quality of state-provided preK programs have declined in recent years. Factors contributing to the excellence gap include:  

• less access to high-quality day care, preschool, libraries, and health services;
• food insecurity, exposure to trauma, and other stressors; 
• increasing segregation of neighborhoods by income, leaving public schools reliant on local taxes in low-income areas  
• a lack of rigorous course options and access to counseling at under-resourced schools; and 
• poor identification of advanced learners from low-income and culturally diverse families, precluding them from differentiated instruction and resources. 

Faced with recurring obstacles throughout their academic journeys, students from low-income households who do perform at the advanced level are less likely to stay at that level, to go on to college, to complete college, and to go on to graduate school. As Jansorn describes, the excellence gap is essentially, “This accumulation of effects that happens to individuals who began their educational journey with academic talent but lack access to information, resources, and opportunities.” In their commitment to address this gap, JKCF emphasizes the importance of early intervention, and providing a context of academic support early on, so that students who demonstrate academic potential receive the instruction and services they need in order to stay at level.

We know relying on any one test is not sufficient for identifying giftedness in students. And it’s important to acknowledge that a student may exhibit giftedness in one particular domain and not another.

Recognizing Student Potential

How can educators identify the talent of all students capable of high achievement, including students with financial need? The observations of educators and families, along with universal screening and multifaceted assessments given at various grade levels, provide multiple entry points to services for students. Teacher training and support can help educators to recognize talent and minimize bias. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation sponsors research on equitable practices, including an extensive study co-authored by CTD director Paula Olzewski-Kubilus on identifying gifted students in culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

“High quality teachers (who have the funding and resources they need in order to do their jobs) are at the core of addressing the excellence gap,” says Jansorn. “It comes down to the importance of teacher observation of students. We know relying on any one test is not sufficient for identifying giftedness in students. And it’s important to acknowledge that a student may exhibit giftedness in one particular domain and not another.”

Parents also have an opportunity to contribute insights into the potential they observe in their children. One of the questions Jansorn asks caregivers is when they realized their child was demonstrating special skills and abilities. “You hear from parents these heartwarming, tingly stories of early observation like, ‘My child kept asking lots of questions,’ or, ‘I found my child reading a book that I didn't know they could read,’ or, ‘My child would spend hours tinkering with materials they had found in our house.’ What you see is an attention to the individual expression of a love of learning, of the commitment to finding out why, and a commitment to trying to accomplish something.”

Working with families and schools, talent centers like Center for Talent Development (CTD) assist in connecting students with opportunities to develop their unique talents. “Without those partnerships we would have a difficult time finding the students that would benefit most from the scholarship program,” notes Jansorn. “CTD has been a tremendous partner in outreach, identifying students and schools, and communicating with educators and parents about the program.” 

Financial Support and Academic Advising 

Financial support, educational advising, and nurturing community networks are the core tenets of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s efforts to help students to overcome the excellence gap. The Foundation’s annual undergraduate and graduate school scholarships award up to $40,000 to high-performing students with financial need. Once students are accepted, JKCF works to match them with appropriately rigorous courses, high schools, and colleges. Not all students are in schools where they have access to accelerated courses—for example, gifted programming in middle school, or Advanced Placement courses, international baccalaureate programs, dual enrollment, or college courses for older students. “That creates a significant hurdle for being able to apply to college,” notes Jansorn. “We make sure schools and school districts have the resources they need to offer advanced courses so that a student is college ready.”

The Foundation’s Young Scholars program provides support customized to individual student needs, including access to supplemental classes, extracurricular opportunities, technology, and other resources, which are known to be vital to talent development. “We make sure students have access to academic-focused extracurricular activities and summer learning experiences—ideally project-based experiences—so students can express their choice and delve into topics that matter to them. Students are more eager to learn to the fullest extent when it's a topic that has some connection to them, a question they want to answer, or a curiosity they have an eagerness to pursue,” says Jansorn. As she notes, many JKCF students participate in CTD programs to pursue these interests: “CTD's program on civic engagement has been a fantastic opportunity for our students to think through how they would solve some of our nation's most pervasive challenges.”

JKCF’s educational advisors work with students and their families in the Young Scholars Program, and with students throughout college and graduate school, to help them set their goals and to identify the resources and the opportunities they need to achieve those goals. “As challenges arise, our advisers are there as a success coach on the side, helping students to troubleshoot,” says Jansorn. And it's not just about getting to college: “If getting to college is your goal post, then you get confused about what to do next.” Mentorship and guidance from adults is critical for any student on a talent development journey.

At the heart of the Foundation’s mission is providing students with consistent support to help them to reach their goals and find fulfillment. “We focus on making sure we're helping students prepare for, and thrive, in top-performing colleges, and that they ultimately go on to fulfilling professional lives, and through their career choices are able to make significant contributions to whatever field they choose,” says Jansorn. “We don't emphasize any particular career or school over another. We do emphasize top-performing schools. We want students to choose a school that has a high graduation rate and has the resources to support them in achieving their desired career. Our focus has always been on providing the opportunity for highly talented individuals to live out their purpose.”
 

Center for Talent Development at Northwestern · Natalie Jansorn on Students' Contributions to the World

Cultivating Community Support 

Cultivating community support is also essential to success. Isolation—from community resources, access to counseling, social emotional support, or role models who have gone through the college application process—is a major barrier for high-achieving, low-income students. “We spend a lot of time building and nurturing the Cooke Scholar community so students have a network of like-minded peers to rely on,” notes Jansorn. “Students benefit from connecting with people who understand not just the academic side but also what it might be like to be the first in your family to go to college, or to be an underrepresented minority student at a highly selective college. We hear over and over again from scholars that being a part of the Cooke Scholar community is a backbone for them—a safety net and a home base that they can go back to.”

Parent networking is another powerful resource in overcoming isolation. “We use technology to our advantage where we can, reaching out with online chats and meetups for parents,” says Jansorn. “But there are also parents for whom—whether it's because of language needs, or home access to and comfort with technology—a Zoom or Google Hangout is not going to be the answer. So we have community-wide approaches, but we also have pairings, which we call ‘accountability partners.’” Jansorn suggests teachers may also cultivate community support and reduce isolation by nurturing networks: pairing parents, or a group small enough that members can exchange contact information.

A Growing Problem

Research shows that issues of inequity have been worsening in recent years. Data shared by the JKCF illustrates how poverty has increased and the excellence gap has widened: 

• The child poverty rate in the U.S. was over 20% in 2012, up from 15% in 1970. 
• A record-high nearly half of all American public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. 
• Due to the rise of the test prep industry, the difference in SAT scores between students from rich and poor families has grown from 90 points in the 1980s to 125 points today. 
• According to data on student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the percentage of students in grades 4, 8, and 12 from higher-income families achieving an “advanced” score is much higher than the percentage of those from lower-income families, and this gap has widened significantly since 1996.

Policymakers, researchers, and school leaders tend to focus more resources on proficiency than excellence, leaving this substantial gap to grow only wider, failing to serve promising students, and letting their talents languish. What can educators and other community leaders learn from JKCF’s programming, and how can they better serve high-performing, low-income students? “We need to invest more in early academic interventions, in sustaining high quality academic interventions throughout the K-12 pipeline, in access to the advanced courses, and in making sure that students have access to counselors who are adept at preparing students to apply to a variety of different schools that match their academic profile,” says Jansorn. “We need counselors who can help them to complete the FAFSA, the financial aid forms, and to help them interpret the information about college costs so they don't become intimidated when seeing the cost presented on a school's website, and choose not to apply based on sticker shock.” 

Underlying these concerns is the need for an unwavering belief in identifying and supporting talent in every community at every grade level. High quality curriculum and instruction that allows students to learn and grow at a pace that matches their readiness to learn needs to be available in every school. “We have lots of interventions that we know work,” notes Jansorn. “We need people who believe in the students for whom those interventions are designed, so that we have the funding invested in those interventions and the capacities to support effective implementation. And then we'll start to see a reduction in the widening of the excellence gap.”

We're doing a lot right now to move from being verbally outraged about this, to now taking imperative action.

Responding to Crisis

This year, students have faced unprecedented challenges as various aspects of daily life, particularly education, have rapidly changed. “The confluence of COVID-19, economic crisis, and our nation's reckoning with insidious racism have posed significant challenges for our families and our students,” says Jansorn. “Many of our families have suffered from illness and loss of income. Many of our families have jobs where they didn't have the choice whether or not they could stay home; they had to go to work, and that obviously put them at risk. All of the students experienced disruption in their schooling.”

School closures due to the Covid-19 outbreak have disproportionately affected low-income families and communities. Jansorn and her colleagues have been working to make sure JKCF students have access to mental health resources, the technology they need to continue to learn, and basic necessities: “We have been trying to find a complement between a focus on the student's educational needs and their whole self, and in particular their wellness and mental health, at this time. We're learning about how to find sufficient internet access in very rural areas, where it's not as simple as calling your local cable company. We couple that with focusing on how to address the anxiety and depression that may come from the pandemic, the job loss, the racial unrest. We've done a lot more on connecting students to local resources—to telehealth, to mental health professionals, when available. And we've also offered emergency funds to our students and families for housing and food security, a need that has now really exploded, unfortunately, as a result of recent events. You can't learn very well in your online class if you don't have access to meals. “On the horrific murders that we've seen and the dehumanization of Black people in our country—that has been incredibly hard for our students, our families, our staff, and our alumni. We're doing a lot right now to move from being verbally outraged about this, to now taking imperative action. One small but important change we've made is our new college scholarship and transfer scholarships don't require standardized tests. This is in recognition of the potential inequities in those exams due to COVID-19 and lack of access to preparation.”

At a time when educational practices are being upended and transformed, it’s important for all organizations to reflect on inequities and work toward meaningful change. “We're taking a hard look at all of our policies and our practices internally so we’re looking at every step of a scholar's experience with us from a justice, equity, and inclusion lens,” says Jansorn. “We’re doing foundation-wide anti-racism training so we can step up and be even stronger advocates for each and every one of our students, and in particular, for our Black, indigenous, and Latinx students. “It has been the hardest summer ever in my fifteen years at the Cooke Foundation, and I feel for our students and our families and our staff who are working every day to find just one more step forward, toward a better world.”

Impact on the Future

What impact could a “hidden” cohort of exceptionally talented students could have on future generations in our society in our global community? The potential to solve or alleviate our world’s most pervasive and complex problems. When she started at the Cooke Foundation fifteen years ago, Jansorn thought about how she could be meeting a student who one day might cure cancer. “But now I also think, ‘I'm meeting someone who one day will help cure the ills of our educational system. Who will help cure the ills of our healthcare systems.’ When you have students who have this tremendous will to succeed, they have a gratefulness for the opportunities that have been afforded to them, and they have the intellect and the drive to take that and put it into motion to better our world.

Last week I had the privilege of seeing three scholars who I remember meeting in my first year. They're now fully formed adults. And they are living out the piece of our work purpose of making significant contributions to the world. I'm excited to see the potential that this next generation of leaders will have on interventions to provide better education opportunities for the up-and-coming students, who are going to benefit from the paths these students have placed. I'm everyday grateful that I get to be a small part of their journey.”  

 

Equity and Inclusion in Practice  

Last year, public school and local officials made moves to eliminate gifted programs in New York and Seattle. Though these proposals have generated controversy, their proponents argue that this change is necessary to create equity in diverse schools. According to the New York Times, nearly 70 percent of that city’s school system is Black or Hispanic, though in 2018, white and Asian children made up nearly 75 percent of elementary school gifted enrollment. Seattle public schools are struggling with a similar imbalance, with the city’s school superintendent calling it “almost a segregated system.” How can schools like these fairly and fully serve a diverse student population, including advanced learners from all backgrounds?

“Everybody sees it as an either/or: if we can’t have it equitable, then we shouldn’t have it at all,” explains Dr. Colleen Boyle, the former Director of Gifted & Talented at Ohio’s Columbus City Schools and new Coordinator of Curriculum and Gifted in Bexley. “The problem is if you go that route, you’re going to further the inequities, because the kids who have that potential who are gifted who aren’t represented are really never going to have a chance to get what they need.” For the last seven years, Boyle has worked with the Columbus school district of 45,000–50,000 students, approximately 4,500 of whom are identified as gifted. During this time—and throughout her 25-plus years in gifted education—Boyle has explored the best ways to support underrepresented advanced learners through careful assessment and direct engagement, in addition to online learning.

Opportunities in the Virtual Classroom

One new online learning initiative pioneered by Boyle is the Online Curriculum Consortium for Accelerating Middle School, otherwise known as Project OCCAMS. Boyle notes that OCCAMS was conceived as “not only as a way to create a course, but also to help target students who are typically underrepresented in advanced programs.” Through OCCAMS, middle-school students engage in a two-year English language arts curriculum that lets them complete ninth-grade English early. “When kids have that kind of head start in middle school, they’re better prepared for advanced coursework in high school,” she explains.

So far, OCCAMS has been a collaborative, illuminating experience for administrators as well as students. Boyle recounts that CTD’s Dr. Eric Calvert and his Northwestern University colleagues initiated the project, then partnered with the College of William & Mary’s Center for Gifted Education to draw on that institution’s expertise in English language arts curriculum development. The resulting program focused on five Columbus, Ohio schools with a curriculum customized to the needs of a “highly diverse urban population.” Though Boyle notes that some of these students had already been identified as gifted, the program also provided opportunities for students who hadn’t previously participated in gifted instruction.

“The outcomes have been amazing,” Boyle says, noting last year’s high scores and pass rates for the program’s eighth graders who took a ninth-grade English and language arts test. Though OCCAMS moved to hybrid instruction since its inception, the program was originally designed as completely online. Boyle was already well-versed in distance education (she completed both of her own advanced degrees online), and the OCCAMS experience has highlighted some important truths about student communication, engagement, and learning in the digital age.

She observes that online instruction can give “everyone equal space to be heard.” This can encourage underrepresented students to share their perspectives, and OCCAMS is designed to resonate with this population: structured around themes like identity and heroism, the curriculum encourages reflection and expression. “It’s relevant to them,” Boyle says.

Center for Talent Development at Northwestern · Dr. Colleen Boyle on The Importance Of Learning Technological Tools For Online Learning

Some students who qualified to participate in OCCAMS had been identified as gifted when they were younger, but were scoring low in English language arts by middle school. To make sure students like these don’t fall through the cracks (or voluntarily “disengage” from gifted content over time), Boyle advocates for relevant, ongoing assessments. Districts should select assessments based on their student populations, she emphasizes, and all students should participate in these assessments. “Universal screening has been shown to be a very straightforward way to address inequities in [gifted] identification,” she says. In contrast with a potentially subjective, multi-step referral process long-favored by some schools, universal screening “automatically is looking at every single child to see if there’s a possibility they’re gifted.”

Universal screenings, among other ongoing practices, can help schools widen the scope of ways to support—and include—all students in a diverse population. Some critics of gifted education argue that gifted programs separate students and exacerbate socioeconomic divisions. Boyle says it doesn’t have to be this way: instruction can take many forms, and districts should look at gifted services as a “continuum of needs” in order to support a range of students. To minimize burdens on families with financial need, schools should offer free talent-development services during the school day, and Boyle says these opportunities should be available early (in preschool, if possible).  

Educators as Agents for Change

Everyone in a school community can contribute to a more equitable and inclusive learning environment. To do this effectively, Boyle explains that educators have to examine institutional culture, as well as unconscious individual biases. She points to the recent Opportunity Myth study, which highlights how some students may suffer from lowered teacher expectations related to their race or socioeconomic status, and she notes that teachers should be trained to recognize “traits of giftedness outside of their own cultural points of reference.” Ongoing student engagement is crucial as well, and Boyle emphasizes that students still need regular face-to-face check-ins with their teachers when working remotely (she suggests Zoom meetings as one way to connect).

Center for Talent Development at Northwestern · Dr. Colleen Boyle on the Importance of School Districts Offering Range of Gifted Services

Boyle explains that familiarity with school structure and operations, as well as understanding the priorities of school leadership, has also been vital when implementing new programs such as OCCAMS. In her efforts to make advanced learning opportunities available to students of all backgrounds, Boyle has identified influential school decision makers, engaging them on everything from curriculum development to space management. “Recognizing how one seemingly small program or change is going to impact everyone and everything else in the system is key.”