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Squeaky wheels: Parents who demand gifted classes say they only want what's best for their children
Sunday, June 10, 2001 By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
This summer, 750 children from all over Pennsylvania will attend programs at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Talented Elementary Students -- and there's a waiting list.
In New York City last year, Hunter College's public elementary school for gifted and talented students was swamped with 3,000 applications -- for 48 places.
And at the Marriott Downtown in April, the annual conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education, a state advocacy group, was jammed with more than 500 participants, many of them parents. Some of the sessions were standing room only.
Everywhere, it seems, parents are stampeding to get their children into gifted programs.
But are they pushing too hard?
Marcia Cohen remembers the day she put a kindergarten student on the bus to the Pittsburgh schools' gifted center on the North Side. "I told his mother he was too young -- we usually wait until second grade. But she insisted he be tested," said Cohen, principal at Linden Academy, an elementary school in Point Breeze. "And he just stood there and wet his pants, poor thing. We got him on, but every Tuesday it would be the same thing, he would have an accident, until finally the mother said, 'I give up. You were right, he is too young.' "
Nancy Bunt, executive director of Collaboratives for Learning, believes that in some cases, status-seeking plays a part in some parents' quest for the gifted label.
"While profoundly gifted children are wired differently, with different needs, there are actually very few of them," she says.
But even if their children aren't highly gifted, some parents will seek gifted services for them if the students are trapped in boring classes with teachers who don't challenge them, Bunt says.
"Unfortunately, only the savvy parents know to pull that cord, and it becomes a label that is therefore more available to those parents who have status --or are seeking it."
Others contend these parents are just searching for a way to relieve their bright child's frustration in school.
"I talk to a lot of parents every day, and certainly some of them could be labeled as pushy parents," says Ann Shoplik, director of Carnegie Mellon's talented student institute.
"But the vast majority I work with are following their children, who are begging for more. They're bored in school and they want new material."
Listening to the children
Urmi Ashar says she's not pushy.
Rather, she says, she's been pushed by her child to seek out the best gifted education opportunities she can find.
She knew something was different on the day she and her little boy were in a pediatrician's office in Mt. Lebanon waiting to be seen for an ear infection.
"He flipped through a copy of American Pediatric Journal and said, pointing to an article, 'Mommy, why don't we try homeopathy instead of antibiotics all the time?'"
"I was in shock. How could he even pronounce this word? He wasn't even 4 years old." That was when Ashar, a doctor trained as an anesthesiologist, was introduced to her new, full-time job: mother of a profoundly gifted child.
There had been plenty of signals. Her little boy, whom she doesn't want to name to protect his privacy, could read by the time he was 2. He didn't play easily with other children his age. Even KinderMusic classes bored him.
"Mom, why I can't I just learn to play an instrument?" he asked.
Soon afterwards, Ashar took action. She had him tested -- and as she expected, his IQ was extremely high. She called every school district in the Pittsburgh region she could think of, trying to find one that would take a child who had not even entered kindergarten, but who probably was ready to zip through second grade.
None would. "They all told me he was too young. I could tell some of them were rolling their eyes at me," she says. "But I really wasn't the one pushing. He was pushing me," says Ashar.
Eventually, she moved with her husband from Upper St. Clair to Denver, where they were able to enroll their son in a special school for profoundly gifted children. There, she says, "for the first time in his life he was making friends."
Listening to the parents
It is no secret that the increase in parents demanding gifted programs coincided with public schools dropping the practice of "tracking."
Stung by criticism that putting children in vocational education, basic and college preparatory "tracks" was racist, school systems in the late 1980s began grouping children of all abilities together in classrooms. But many parents then argued their bright children weren't being challenged, and began demanding gifted programs.
"The reality, politically speaking, is that administrators use gifted programs to keep affluent white parents in the public schools," claims Alfie Kohn, an outspoken national critic of current public education. Most gifted education programs, Kohn says, "represent a grab for the best teachers and resources on the part of politically powerful and savvy parents."
But the push for gifted programs doesn't just happen in urban districts.
"An awful lot of people want to be gifted parents -- whoops, I mean parents of gifted children," jokes Paul Stevens, a Bucks County attorney who has represented both parents and schools in court cases involving gifted education for the past three decades.
This is true especially in suburbs where affluent, well-educated parents know their rights under the law, are skillful at advocating for their children and in some cases, can afford to go elsewhere if they aren't satisfied.
And those school districts are listening. In Upper St. Clair, the school board last year finalized a highly competitive International Baccalaureate program from first through 12th grade.
In fast-growing Chartiers Valley, newly flush with tax revenue from upscale communities like Nevillewood and Collier, the board spent $80,000 on an elaborate "Tech Ed" program -- a high-tech version of traditional vocational education.
"Let's face it, we have to compete," says Mike Scheinberg, a gifted coordinator in Chartiers Valley's middle school, who says he's received "tremendous support" from the school administration.
And there can be an upside to pushy behavior.
"If parents of gifted children in our district are guilty of one thing, it's pushing the envelope," says Tony Lo Prete, a counselor at Greater Latrobe Junior High School. When word got out that the district was permitting a child to take an advanced math class, other parents demanded the same for their children.
"It opened a Pandora's box of sorts," Lo Prete says, but it also prompted the district to explore other strategies for gifted students. "In a way, it's the push from the children and their parents that helps us shape our gifted program for the future," he says.
Not all districts react that way, though. Many parents say they have to fight against a perception that gifted programs are elitist, and say that if they don't push for such services, no one else will.
"Our friends proudly hand out sports cards with their children's sports statistics on them, list the team's successes, boast of championships won, but ask any parent of a gifted child how people would respond if we publicly showed the same pride in our children's academic achievements," says Jennifer McElhany, a parent near Lancaster, Pa., who has two sons identified as gifted.
"It wouldn't be positive."
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