GILROY
– Responding to parent concerns, the district will present
information on the way students are identified for the Gifted And
Talented Education (GATE) program at tonight’s board meeting.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Responding to parent concerns, the district will present information on the way students are identified for the Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) program at tonight’s board meeting.
Gilroy Unified School District began using a new assessment tool this year to place third- through fifth-grade students in the program for gifted students.
At last Thursday’s school board meeting, Gilroy parent Jim Walling told trustees a group of parents has “some grave concerns” relating to what they say is a “fundamentally flawed process.”
The new assessment, he said, places much more emphasis on testing and gives little consideration to student motivation or more comprehensive assessments. The result, he said, is that fewer students are GATE identified and parents and teachers receive less feedback on how best to teach those students.
“This is a program that is designed for the ease of administrators, as opposed to quality of identification,” Walling said.
Tonight, Joe Guzicki, coordinator for student services who oversees the district’s GATE program, will provide an overview of the current assessment, called the Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary and Middle School students, or SAGES. According to GUSD data, the tool is part of a multifaceted assessment process that includes parent and teacher input and other standardized test scores.
Another GATE parent at last week’s meeting raised concerns that the third and fourth grade GATE classes at Rucker Elementary School will be combined into one next year. The district’s only full-day GATE program is housed at Rucker.
Superintendent Edwin Diaz said a GATE combination class became an option as more students transferred into their neighborhood schools.
“Originally, the decision was that we were going to – even if we had low enrollment – we would continue to fill the class in the same manner that we did this year, which was, fill the class with other students who were ‘high-achieving students’,” Diaz said. “But when the numbers were low, both in the third and fourth grade, the option of combining classes like we do with every other (school) in the district began to be discussed.”
No final decision will be made without a discussion with parents, he said, and the district will schedule a meeting to do that.
Tonight’s regular board meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in the district office, 7810 Arroyo Circle.
