Total School Cluster Grouping: Effects on the Identification and Achievement of Populations Underserved in Gifted Education

• In Event: Designing and Implementing Culturally Responsive Programming for Advanced Learners in K–12 Schools

Abstract

This project experimentally scales-up Total School Cluster Grouping (TSCG) with a sample of 100 elementary schools assigned to treatment or control conditions, with three-level growth curve modeling. As an intervention, TSCG helps teachers (1) improve student achievement in mathematics, language arts, and science; (2) recognize and develop talent among students from underrepresented populations; and (3) routinely use with all students strategies often found only in gifted programs. Sites with at least 40% of their students eligible for Federal Free and Reduced Meals Program are found in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Minnesota. All students and all teachers in the study sites are included in the research, making for a robust sample. TSCG combines grouping, with teacher training and the delivery of enriched, differentiated curriculum and instruction in every classroom. TSCG involves yearly identification of student achievement levels and places gifted/high-achieving students in one cluster classroom, above-average achieving students in other classrooms, and decreases the range of achievement variability in every classroom. Clustering enables teachers to more effectively challenge their students, thereby providing full-time services to gifted students, facilitating achievement growth among all students, involving all teachers in the use of gifted education strategies, and helping teachers develop and recognize talent among students from underserved populations whose potential often goes unrecognized in heterogeneous classrooms. Phase I (Years 1 through 3) involved controlled study of treatment and control schools, and has resulted in identifying significantly more students from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse families as gifted across 90% of the treatment sites. Corresponding achievement data are currently being analyzed. Delayed implementation of treatment among control schools and on-going data collection from Phase I treatment sites begins in the fall of 2017 in Phase II (Years 4 and 5). The research team provides leadership team training, web-based support, and 10 on-line gifted-education professional-development modules designed to promote understanding of gifted students, recognition of talent among underserved populations, and implementation of gifted-education differentiation strategies in language arts, math, and science. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected and are being analyzed to describe program effects and to evaluate the project during Phase I of the project as Phase II begins. Treatment effects are being examined using a 3-level growth-curve model to explore specific school, group, and individual differences as well as to discern whether the individual growth of students in the treatment program is greater than that of the control group.

Authors

• Marcia L. Gentry, Purdue University

• Jennifer C. Richardson, Purdue University

• Yukiko Maeda, Purdue University

• Nielsen Pereira, Purdue University

• Juliana Tay, Purdue University