The Observation Deck

During tonight's Superintendent report (7:00 p.m. in Garfield Middle School’s Cafetorium, 13114 Detroit Avenue) Mrs. Pam Griebel will report on what is happening with Lakewood's Gifted Program. A committee made up of teachers, parents and administrators has been meeting for a while, this is a chance to find out what direction the program is going.

As some with students in the program already know, the program has already undergone some changes. We lost our second grade gifted program awhile ago, this past Fall we lost our 4/5 classes to single 4th and 5th grade classes which required taking teachers away from the Middle Schools gifted programs to staff the single gifted elementary classes. Ms. Andrasak who was a gifted Middle School Science teacher now teaches gifted fourth grade at St. Lincoln. Mrs. Holland who taught gifted students several different subjects at Garfield was brought to Emerson to teach gifted fifth grade.

To make up for the losses, gifted teachers at both Harding and Garfield have had to double up and teach more classes, some of them driving back and forth between schools during the day, some taking on grade levels they'd not been teaching, ie, the upper middle school teachers now teach sixth grade through 8th. Harding also lost Mr. Spooner who taught gifted Language Arts and Social Studies. He now has a position as a curriculum consultant at Emerson.

There have been no replacements hired to replace THREE gifted teachers at the Middle Schools. Everyone it seems has tightened their belts.

It will be interesting to see if tonight's comments address this loss. Many of us who have had amazingly good experiences with the Gifted program-- some who moved to Lakewood for the Gifted program-- are worried that the program will continue going the way it has gone-- losing teachers, placing larger burdens on existing teachers.

If you care about this program, you will wanted to attend tonight's meeting. I will post the full agenda next.

Betsy Voinovich

Unfortunately I have to work tonight. If you are at the meeting, could you please give us a report of what is discussed? I love Lakewood's gifted program. It has been a wonderful experience for both of our girls and has pushed them to reach their fullest potential. I'm nervous for the outcome of this and really hope they aren't considering dumping the program. What a disservice that would be . . .

Hi Amy,

Like you I have loved Lakewood’s Gifted program, it has been a wonderful experience (so far) for my children also. Parents were pretty well represented at last night’s meeting to hear Mrs. Griebel’s presentation.

The main points were:

1.) The District has identified more Gifted (Lakewood City Schools definition of “Gifted” in this context means that when students are tested, they score 128 or higher on the IQ portion of the test, and 85 percent or higher on the Terra Novas in math and reading—OR—they score 120 or higher on the IQ test and a 95 percent in one subject and 90 percent higher in the other. Our assessment and identification measures differ from what the state of Ohio requires in that the state requires that the IQ score is 128 or higher and 95 percent in math and science. I think.) children than the District is serving, and that needs to change. The District should be serving all of its Gifted children.

2.) The way we are identifying and testing our students is causing us to score poorly on the “Value Added” portion of the state tests, even as we score well on the “Performance Index” and that needs to change.

The “Value Added” index measures a student’s performance against his or her own performance from the year before, year by year. If a B student stays a B student from 3rd to 4th grade, they score poorly on the Value Added Index because their grade, compared to the year before did not go up. This means our District does very well if we have students doing very poorly who then improve year by year, from a D to a C will get you high marks.

But what of the students that scored A or A+ to begin with? It turns out that they are ruining are Value Added scores. If those students remain the same, at an A+, they score poorly on the Value Added Index, even as they are at the top of the chart in the Performance Index.

While it seems simple enough to say that staying at the top should be sufficient, ie, a fourth grader who has an A+ average has an A+ average the next year, because this gets you a bad score in Value Added it proves that our District is FAILING to provide sufficient challenges to our Gifted students.

While it seems that it would take a simple adjustment when testing Gifted students, there is no simple adjustment, in fact it has caused great consternation. Mattel, the corporation that is doing the statistical analysis (not sure of spelling, I can’t imagine it’s the toy manufacturer but I don’t know) in fact calls it a “Conundrum.”

If you follow the logic of this, our Gifted Students who are already studying material that is one grade higher than other students (For example, 3rd graders take 4th grade math)
should continue to add grades every year or so, so by the time they are in Middle School, they should be in High School, curriculum-wise. This in fact already happens. In our two middle schools, starting with Algebra, our 7th grade Gifted math students get high school credit for their middle school classes. Our District serves our current Gifted students quite well by normal standards.

Though every one in the room understood the absurdity of it being BAD to have a high score because then you can’t improve, this is the case. High Performance Index can equal low Value Added Index. Obviously, how our District fares in these very recently created, and relatively arbitrary-- if not completely wrongheaded in the case of this issue with the Value Added metrics-- evaluations coming from the state of Ohio is a very big deal.

Many measures are being taken to try to fix this.


I have to go now, and cannot go into more detail, but I will later, particularly on the first point --- serving all of our kids.

It was a very good presentation, complete with excellent questions and representation from our School Board members afterward. Clearly our District has a lot to deal with, and much of it is not by their creation or choice.

I’m hoping that others that were there can add more.

I will be back later.

Betsy Voinovich

The loss of three of our Middle School gifted teachers who have not been replaced, and the loss of our 2 level, 4/5 classes (along with the loss of our 2/3 classes) were not addressed, at least not in Mrs. Griebel's presentation. It may have come up later during Communications when parents were allowed to speak.


Pam Griebel gave a thoughtful and very clear presentation.


Here is the pie chart showing the "Gifted" status of the children in our District. The blue section indicates students who are not identified as Gifted, the red are students identified as Gifted but not served, the yellow are those identified as both Gifted and served.

Betsy, thanks for the nice summary. The organization that is doing the statistic analysis is Battelle for Kids, a Columbus-based nonprofit.