Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 4)

This week in our in-depth look at the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) we'll address the effectiveness of this controversial program.

Parents seeking to enroll their children in APAAS generally do so for one (or more) of three reasons. First, they believe that their students will receive the most rigorous and challenging education offered by the IUSD—one of the top-ranked school districts in California. Second, they feel that this training, apart from its specific pedagogic content, will teach their children to be serious students—hard working, organized, and, perhaps most important, high achieving. Finally, they think that by segregating their children from students in the regular program—APAAS students are grouped together for three years, separate from the other classes other than in subjects like physical education and music—they will engineer an appropriately diligent and studious peer group for them. This peer group, at least in theory, will further foster academic achievement and protect APAAS students from the typical social distractions of upper elementary, middle, and, ultimately, high school years.

Unfortunately, none of these reasons for enrolling a child in APAAS has empirical support. Let's address each one in turn. If APAAS students are, in fact, receiving the most rigorous and challenging education available in the district, we would expect to see significantly higher achievement later on. When I researched this myself two years ago, I discovered several important facts.

First, regardless of what happens during the APAAS grades of 4 through 6, APAAS students proceed to middle school, where they join the regular and Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) students in the middle school curriculum. So even if they have completed an accelerated program in elementary school, it isn't followed by anything comparable later on.

Second, there are no data indicating that APAAS students perform any better than non-APAAS students in middle school, high school, or college. The APAAS program has no empirically valid outcome data. When I inquired about this, I was told that administrators were beginning to explore the issue and had arrived at an outcome measure. What was this variable? Matriculation at any four-year college or university. Since most IUSD seniors go on to college following graduation, this measure of APAAS effectiveness does not seem useful.

Turning to the second reason parents enroll their children in APAAS—that the program will train them to be serious students—we again find no evidence supporting this belief. Yes, APAAS students have to work hard—they are overloaded with homework. And yes, they have to be organized—or, more accurately, to have organized and available parents. But these things do not teach children to be serious students—nor, as we've seen, do they turn these students into high achievers. Serious students are those who are independently motivated and actively engaged with—and excited by—the things they are learning. If anything, APAAS students, through no fault of their own, may well end up being less serious students, because any joy in learning and school has been driven out of them.

Finally, parental hopes that the APAAS peer group will ultimately influence academic achievement for the better are ill-founded. As already mentioned, APAAS students do not proceed into comparable programs in the IUSD middle and high schools; rather, they're intermixed with regular and GATE students from a wide variety of elementary, and then middle, school programs. The "boot camp" APAAS atmosphere is gone, and many former APAAS students find themselves coasting through middle school and feeling happier than they have in years. Many, too, are glad to be back in classes with old non-APAAS friends—and to be broadening their social worlds with completely new friendships after having spent three years in a classroom with the same kids.

Next week we'll take a look at parental satisfaction and who is most—and least—likely to be happy with the APAAS program.

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 3)

Today in our special multipart series on the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) we'll take a closer look at two of the APAAS homework assignments themselves.

One recurring assignment, the Reader's Workshop, asks students to analyze and write about a book they've read. Although this may sound good in theory, in practice the questions students must address are far beyond the capabilities of even very bright fourth graders. For example, few nine-year-olds can understand what is meant by "Explain how the growth and development of this character contributes to the rising action of the plot" or "What techniques does the author use to create a mood in the setting that makes the plot more convincing?" Such questions are more suited to students in junior high or even high school; fourth graders simply do not have the level of abstract thought necessary to answer these sorts of questions.

Another recurring assignment, Earth Watch, instructs students to read a newspaper article about a debatable issue, summarize the article's content, present an argument mentioned or inherent in the article, report how their parent feels about the issue, and present their own opinion, providing reasons for and against one position or the other. Again, this APAAS assignment is difficult, if not impossible, for nine-year-olds to do without considerable parental help. Simply figuring out what a newspaper article is saying, much less sifting through arguments and presenting logically reasoned positions, is often over their heads.

APAAS assignments repeatedly fail to take into consideration the developmental levels and needs of upper elementary students. Even worse, at a time when children should be becoming more independent, the nature of the assignments forces students to become more dependent on parents for help. At the annual APAAS information night, where parents listen to a general presentation of the APAAS program and then disperse to different classrooms to ask questions of APAAS teachers from the various sites, parents are advised that deciding to apply to and enroll their child in APAAS is a "family affair." Being an APAAS student doesn't just up the demands for students—it increases them dramatically for parents as well, sabotaging any efforts to increase their children's independence.

Although it's true that, over time, students adjust (for better or worse) to the unreasonable homework demands and gradually become more capable of completing these tasks on their own or with less parental help, the program in its most rigorous form is detrimental to children's sense of self-efficacy and, ultimately, self-esteem. Every year some students become clinically depressed in the program; on occasion, some even become suicidal.

Next week we'll examine the APAAS program's effectiveness, after which we'll explore why parents enroll their children in APAAS and who is likely to be most (and least) satisfied with the program.

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 2)

Continuing our special multipart series on the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS), today we focus on what is perhaps the most obvious problem of this well-intentioned but misguided program: the homework load.

Although the amount of homework can vary considerably from site to site (a problem in itself, as we discussed in Part 1), developmentally inappropriate amounts of homework are the rule rather than the exception. Few parents want to see their nine-year-old fourth grader routinely spending four or more hours a day (plus most of every weekend) on homework, yet this is exactly what can and does happen.

APAAS homework, at least at Turtle Rock Elementary, consists of recurring assignments (Reader's Workshop letters, Oral Book Interviews, Writer's Workshop papers, Earth Watch debate papers, Word Masters, and Wordly Wise word memorization) and special projects (for example, the 13-part "Indian Project" in the fall). These are in addition to the "regular" homework, such as lengthy math worksheets (think 73 long-division problems in one night), music practice, reading, and science and social studies worksheets. APAAS students receive individual, year-long schedules for the recurring assignments so they and their families can plan accordingly. One particular week my son had a Reader's Workshop letter, Oral Book Interview, Writer's Workshop paper, Word Masters list, Wordly Wise test, and the Indian Project due (again, in addition to math, music, and other regular assignments).

Although APAAS is supposed provide challenge and depth to students who want or need more than the regular classes offer, it confuses quantity with quality. Unfortunately, overburdening even high-achieving, hard-working upper elementary students with unreasonable amounts of homework fosters neither a love of learning nor of school. On the contrary, it turns previously motivated, enthusiastic learners into stressed-out, exhausted, and even depressed children who have little time for anything other than homework. Far too many of them say they "hate" APAAS—and the tragedy is, most continue in it for three very long, often miserable years.

In Part 3 of this series, we'll take a closer look at the content and intellectual demands of certain recurring APAAS assignments.

Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 1)

Today Edupinion begins a special multipart series on a program in Southern California for high-achieving elementary school students in grades 4 through 6. The Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) created its Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) to "benefit those students whose capacity for intellectual achievement and need for acceleration go beyond what could be provided in a GATE- [Gifted and Talented Education] clustered class."

Sounds good—at least in theory. Clearly some students are more advanced than others and can be bored in regular classrooms. Having a program that identifies such children and places them in a more challenging program with their intellectual peers over the course of several formative years is intuitively appealing.

Like programs for students with learning disabilities and other problems, APAAS can and should be viewed as an "intervention." Although it is at the opposite end of the spectrum, APAAS attempts to meet the needs of students who are not receiving an "appropriate" education in regular classrooms.

The IUSD offers six APAAS sites. For some students, the school they've attended through third grade has an APAAS program, so if they apply and get in, they do not need to switch schools. For others, the closest APAAS site—or the one they get into, since some accepted students do not get into their first- or even second-choice school—may be miles away from their old school.

Admission into the APAAS program is highly competitive, particularly for certain schools. The year my son applied, there were approximately four applicants for every spot at his school. Admission is based on previous academic performance, standardized test scores, and teacher recommendations.

Most parents prefer that their children remain at the school they've been in, assuming it's an APAAS site. Kids are familiar with the school and the other students there and won't have to adjust to an entirely new environment in fourth grade. Moreover, at least when we applied, the APAAS program was billed as being essentially the same from site to site, as any good intervention should be.

Unfortunately, such was not the case. The goals of APAAS were implemented differently, sometimes dramatically so, at each site. Turtle Rock Elementary, for example, had the most rigorous, boot camp–like APAAS; Eastshore Elementary, by contrast, implemented its APAAS program in a more age-appropriate, "fun" way.

So the first problem with this ambitious yet flawed program is its inconsistent implementation between sites. This would not necessarily even be a problem if the lack of uniformity were intentional, designed to offer parents and students an array of pedagogical choices. Unfortunately, the variability between sites is symptomatic of serious systemic shortcomings in the APAAS program. We'll take a closer look at some of these deficiencies beginning next week.

School Lunches: A Cheesy Solution

What happens when kids whose parents are supposed to pay for some or all of their school lunches fail to pick up the tab? Increasingly school districts around the country have begun serving these children cheese sandwiches instead of regular hot meals. Although critics have objected to this policy because it singles out and embarrasses kids whose parents can't afford to pay, others have lauded this attempt to enforce parental responsibility.

The kids in these programs aren't those whose family finances qualify them for free lunches; such children aren't affected by this new policy. Rather, they're kids who either are or aren't eligible for reduced-price lunches but whose parents haven't paid their bills.

A recent news story suggested that the alternative lunches—"a cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a carton of milk"—don't "seem like much of a meal." But many kids, in public and private schools alike, whose parents either can't afford school lunches or do without them out of frugality, bring similar lunches to school every day. These lunches, especially if they include a vegetable or two, are nutritionally just as good as, if not better than, the frequently overcooked, too salty, and fat-laden hot lunches schools provide.

So what's at issue here isn't really nutrition. Instead, it's the humiliation, or "punishment," kids suffer because of their parents' actions. Although the districts' cheese-sandwich solution provides a less expensive, nutritionally adequate lunch to students from nonpaying families, it's a poor one from the standpoint of children's overall well-being at school.

A better idea might simply be to stop providing lunches altogether unless they're either fully paid for or slated for free lunch–program students. This strategy would help solve the schools' budgetary problems without compromising the emotional health of students. Plenty of kids at even the most expensive private schools bring their own lunches, whether for dietary reasons or because their parents can't (or don't want to) pay what can easily amount to an extra $100-plus per month.

And if nonpaying parents then fail to provide inexpensive sack lunches for their kids out of negligence, that's a whole different issue—and one that schools shouldn't be expected to resolve.

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