An Experimental Investigation Scaling Up the Total School Cluster Grouping Model

• In Event: 25.058 - Challenging All Advanced Learners: Research Insights From Projects Funded by the Jacob K. Javits Program

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. By providing all students with enriched and differentiated educational experiences in classrooms in which teachers have the training and time to attend to individual needs, the project will result in identifying significantly more students from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse families as gifted and in improved achievement.
This study is based on evidence from previous research and evaluation studies on TSCG that resulted in increased student achievement for gifted and general students in math and reading, and in increased numbers of students from underserved populations being identified as high achieving. The project focuses on students from low-income families from multiple settings including urban and rural schools and from multiple populations including Ojibwe students who attend school on their reservation—a population rarely studied in gifted education. 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. Final selection of schools was based on demographics and their willingness to meet the conditions of the research plan. 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) involves controlled study of treatment and control schools. Delayed implementation of treatment among control schools and on-going data collection from Phase I treatment sites will occur 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 will be collected and analyzed to describe program effects and to evaluate the project. Treatment effects will be 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

• Scott Joseph Peters, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Matthew Fugate, Purdue University