The

BPS Strategic Plan and the Current State of BPS Gifted Services
BPSs current approach to providing services to gifted and high-ability students is not consistent with the
published BPS Strategic Plan, Mission, and Vision Statements.
The BPS mission statement is
always learning, always growing.

Gifted and high-ability students are not always learning, always growing.
At the elementary level, service delivery is inconsistent and proposed
changes will only exacerbate this problem. Not all gifted/high-ability
math students receive instruction at their level of ability every day.
Many students receive ability-level instruction on alternate days, or only
when their schools gifted coach is available to instruct them. Language
arts instruction for gifted and high-ability students at the districts six
elementary schools is also inconsistent, and largely teacher-dependent.
If services for elementary students become entirely dependent on
classroom teachers as has been proposed and the gifted coaches are no
longer directly working with students, the inconsistency is likely to
become even more significant. Individual teachers may not be able to
provide a suite of services comparable to those the gifted coaches
offered due to a need for training or the composition of students in their
individual classrooms, which may require them to be spread too thinly to
adequately support all student sub-groups as they would wish.

The BPS Vision states that BPS will
be a district recognized for
excellence in our commitment to
students, collaborative culture, and
continuous improvement.

Batavia Public Schools is not a district recognized for excellence in their

commitment to gifted and high-ability student. The formerly
collaborative culture and momentum in the direction of improvement in
services to this population of students has become closed and reversed
course. Our Districts reputation in this area has become increasingly
negative and does not reflect the individual efforts of many dedicated
teachers and professional staff who strive to serve gifted and high-ability
students, despite the lack of a guiding district philosophy or service
delivery plan.


VISION: COMMITMENT TO STUDENTS AND THEIR LEARNING
BPS Vision: Maintaining a culture of
growth and achievement with high
expectations for all students and
staff.

BPS is not promoting a culture of growth and learning for gifted and
high-ability students. The district has discontinued accelerated math for
gifted and high-ability elementary students. Instead, these students
capable of above-grade-level math must work at grade level for five
years until they are allowed curriculum compacted instruction at the
fifth grade level. Even then, they will receive compacted curriculum in a
classroom where the teacher will be expected to simultaneously teach a
typical fifth grade math class as well as the compacted fifth and sixth
grade math class. Language Arts opportunities for gifted and high-ability
students vary widely across the district, as different teachers choose
whether or not to opt in to enriched learning modules made available
by their schools Gifted Coaches. At the middle school level, students
have more opportunities for Honors level instruction, as the numbers of
Honors sections in Math and Language Arts have increased to allow
more students participation. However, the criteria for placement in
these courses are uncertain, as they are unpublished and placement
criteria change yearly. Little if any professional development in the area
of gifted instruction has been offered to teachers, according to teacher
reports.

BPS Vision: Personalized learning to

meet the needs of all students, and
encouraging students to take
ownership of their own success.

Personalized learning for students most often occurs only after parents
advocate for their students needs. The options offered students varies
widely, as there is no published district philosophy or guide to gifted
services, so service provision is teacher/school dependent. While one
school may offer above grade level instruction in mathematics for an
individual student, another school may prohibit such instruction, and
students/families are left to provide that level of instruction in home
schooling or a private school setting.

BPS Vision: Developing the whole

child by providing a variety of
learning experiences that extend
beyond the classroom.

BPS will discontinue the use of the highly-publicized and highlysuccessful collaboration stations as a mode of instruction for gifted
elementary math students, after only one year of use. BPS has chosen to
abandon acceleration in mathematics, and will not offer compacted
curriculum learning in mathematics until grade 5, disregarding the needs
of the whole child and underutilizing the variety of learning experiences
that extend beyond the classroom.

BPS Vision: Focusing all resources

people, time, and moneyon the
critical task of maximizing student
success.

BPS will lose one of our three Gifted Coaches this year to retirement, and
inquiry about replacement of this staff position indicates that it may not
be filledleaving only two Gifted Coaches to staff the needs of Batavias
six elementary schools. The Gifted Coordinator position at Rotolo Middle
School was eliminated in 2011 with the retirement of the Gifted
Coordinator, Liz Selanderleaving no gifted specialist resource at the
middle school level. Elimination of these key staff positions does not
maximize student success because there is no school-level resource on
the needs of gifted and high-ability learners to be utilized by teachers,
parents or students.

VISION: COMMITMENT TO COLLABORATION

BPS Vision: Sharing in decision
making, practicing interest-based
problem solving, and engaging in
professional learning communities.

Since 2006, CANDO has been an invited participant in the BPS Gifted
Committee, representing the views/experiences of parents and students.
Since 2011, CANDO has provided all of the information from the
professional body of research and from the best practices of neighboring
benchmark districts that has guided the work of this partnership.
In fall 2015, Dr. Newkirk presented proposed changes to gifted services
for identification and instruction. CANDO was surprised at these
undiscussed changes, which removed services that had been successful
in previous years. In a January 2016 meeting with Dr. Newkirk and Dr.
Hichens, Dr. Newkirk claimed CANDO had not understood that the
proposals were a draft. While CANDO contests that, CANDO was thrilled
to hear that they were not yet final. Dr. Hichens supported CANDOs
request for a timeline for involving teachers and parents in reviewing the
proposed changes for elementary school, acknowledging it was too late
to do so for middle and high school as the changes had already begun to
be rolled out. CANDO never received a timeline and does not know if any
such participation has been requested from teachers or parents over 2.5
months later. Instead, CANDO was asked to collaborate on developing a
parent inventory to help to identify gifted students; however, that type
of tool already exists, is widely available, and is not in the proposed plans
for identifying gifted students in BPS.
Classroom teachers have not been part of the collaboration process for
gifted services despite numerous requests from CANDO to BPS to have
them included. CANDO has also advocated for greater teacher
involvement in the discussion of how to identify and serve high-ability
and gifted students. Given the Districts trend towards relying on
individual classroom teachers to provide gifted services, CANDO
continues to feel it critical that they be included in the design and
implementation process. CANDO reached out to BEA to establish a
collaborative relationship on its own when efforts to have teachers
included officially were unsuccessful.

BPS Vision: Developing partnerships

that increase opportunities for
students and foster community
pride.

Per Dr. Newkirk, the partnership and collaboration between BPS Gifted
Services and CANDO that has yielded all of the current services to gifted
and high-ability students at the elementary and middle school levels
would be discontinued if CANDO continues to advocate for the needs of
these student populations. CANDO believes that it can continue to be
both a collaborator and an advocate as it has done for the past ten years
and is ready to re-engage when Dr. Newkirk wishes. CANDO does not
believe that collaboration requires partners to blindly agree to proposals
they had no involvement in developing and that they feel is contrary to
both best practices defined in research and seen in benchmark districts
and what is in the best interest of the students of the District. Similarly,
CANDO has always been receptive to and understanding of resource
limitations or other issues that prevent certain ideas brought forth by
CANDO from moving forward.

BPS Vision: Engaging in active, open

communication within an
environment where it is safe to
express differences, share successes,
and learn from our mistakes.

The environment in which communication about the unique needs of

gifted and high-ability students must occur is not safe or open to CANDO,
which is the organization that advocates for those students needs.
Instead, parents are being encouraged to appeal individually to their
childs classroom teacher or gifted coach, their schools principal, or the
process formerly known as the problem-solving process to try to
address the learning needs of their individual student. This is a very
inefficient way to address learning needs of an entire population of
students. Since there is no published service philosophy or
accompanying procedures, the resultant service is also inefficient and
many gifted and high-ability students go unserved.

VISION: COMMITMENT TO CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

BPS Vision: Measuring student
growth and learning with quality
assessments that inform decisionmaking and instructional
improvements.

BPS has chosen to abandon research-supported best practice of utilizing

multiple instruments to identify gifted and high-ability students. Instead,
all students scoring in the 90th percentile and above on four of five most
recent MAP tests are deemed high-ability. (It was recently announced
that BPS will no longer use the term gifted.) Research shows that such
an approach will under-identify racial minorities, socio-economically
disadvantaged students, and students who are twice-exceptional for
participation in gifted services. In addition, valuable information about
students strengths, challenges and approaches to learning will be lost by
eliminating research-supported use of multiple measures.

BPS Vision: Using thoughtful,

systematic processes to evaluate
and improve all programs,
strategies, and practices.

BPS Vision: Ensuring all members of

the school community embrace our
mission to learn and grow.

There is no published thoughtful, systematic process to evaluate

students participation in gifted services. In addition, there are no
published thoughtful, systematic processes to evaluate and improve
services, strategies and practices for gifted and high-ability students in
BPS. Instead, each year the identification process and services offered
has changed with no definition of what problem existed that required
changing, no information on how the changes addressed the issue, and
no metrics set to evaluate the impact of the changes.

Members of the school community have no written information about
processes and procedures relevant to gifted and high-ability students, nor
do they have written information about services. It is impossible to
embrace something that does not exist.