Gifted program may grow

Officials with Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools are considering expanding the program for highly academically gifted students to high school.

If approved, the new program would be at Atkins High School, starting with the 2010-11 school year. School officials say they hope that it would draw more students to the school, which is below capacity. It has a capacity of 1,235 and an enrollment of 937.

As it is, students who score at the 99th percentile in aptitude and 95th percentile or higher in achievement on tests in the second grade can participate in the highly academically gifted program at Brunson Elementary School.

Those students then go on to the program at Hanes Middle School.

Because there is no formal highly academically gifted high-school program, the students then go their separate ways. Many take Advanced Placement, or AP, courses at the Career Center. Others take AP and honors classes at their home school or enter the International Baccalaureate, or IB, program at Parkland High School.

Sandra Hemphill's daughter Meredith is a seventh-grader in the highly academically gifted program at Hanes Middle School.

Hemphill says that having a high-school program for highly academically gifted students would be great.

"We're very excited about the possibility," she said.

Hemphill said she has been impressed by the education that her daughter has received so far in the program.

"The teachers are wonderful," she said. "The parents are involved."

School-system officials would start the high-school program at Atkins with ninth-graders. Before going ahead, Superintendent Don Martin wants the families of at least 35 seventh-graders this year -- they would be ninth-graders during the 2010-11 school year -- to commit to sending their children there.

So, with the Hemphill family in, he needs 34 more of the 75 seventh-graders in the program.

Keeping the students together would allow them to build on the advanced work that they have been doing, said Bud Harrelson, the program specialist for IB and academically gifted programs.

"The idea is to provide them with opportunities so they can continue to grow and accelerate," Harrelson said.

The students would be together for four of the seven periods in the day for English, math, social studies and science.

The courses would be honors or AP courses, and the students would receive credit accordingly. Students could go to the Career Center for AP classes not offered at Atkins. Students would also be interacting with other students at Atkins in elective courses, athletics and after-school programs.

The program would be housed at Atkins in part because it's a magnet school that specializes in science and technology and already has the equipment and other resources that a highly academically gifted program could use.

"It gives an opportunity to take advantage of some pretty neat technology," Martin said.

Technology available at Atkins that is not available elsewhere includes spectrophotometers, centrifuges, software for programming robots and animation software.

Harrelson said that the internships that all seniors at Atkins participate in would give the highly academically gifted students additional opportunities for enriching experiences.

Having the program there could also bring more white students to Atkins -- not only those in the program, Martin said, but others drawn to the school because the program is there. Seventy-five percent of the high school's student body is black, 17 percent is Hispanic, 6 percent is white, and 2 percent is Asian and other backgrounds.

The added cost of a highly academically gifted program at Atkins would be negligible, Martin said.

"The technology is already there," he said.

Although some teachers would have to take training to receive the proper certification to teach in the program, he said, the school system is already spending money for teacher training.

And, because Atkins was designed to attract students from throughout the school district, districtwide bus service is already in place, Martin said.

Tim Lee, the principal at Parkland, said he isn't worried about the program at Atkins drawing students away from Parkland.

"I don't think there is a shortage of really bright kids," Lee said. "It's a matter of them finding the fit that is right for them."

One way in which the IB program differs from the highly academically gifted and academically gifted programs is that is open to students without regard to test scores.

"IB is for all children," Harrelson said. "It is an open-access program."

The IB program is available at Ashley Elementary School, at Paisley Magnet School and at Parkland High School. Most middle schools have students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. At Paisley, the IB program takes students through the 10th grade.

The IB program dates to the League of Nations, when it was developed as a program to educate children from a number of different countries. It retains its international feel and includes international literature, world languages and a study of globalization.

Admission to the academically gifted programs is based on tests given to all second-graders. Students who score at a high level on aptitude and achievement tests are invited to participate in the academically gifted program available at all elementary and middle schools.

Of the 4,231 second-graders tested this year, 320 students (7.5 percent) qualified for the academically gifted program and 49 (1.2 percent) qualified for the highly academically gifted program.

"There are not many, and there shouldn't be many," Harrelson said.

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.

Interested?

• The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system will hold a meeting about the highly gifted program at 6:30 p.m. today at Atkins High School, 3605 Old Greensboro Road.