Maine School of Science and Mathematics: How State Supported Public Schools for the Gifted Can Have Difficulties
Why the difficulties exist and what can be done about it.
Calls for gifted programing and opportunities are sometimes answered with good intentions coupled with a lack of important background on giftedness and issues surrounding identification. A recent and ongoing example is taking place in the New York City public school system in the 2020s.[i], [ii]
The example for this post, which is also relevant to the NYC gifted magnet schools situation that more readers have heard about, explains how there is an issue of relativity and preparation when children’s backgrounds and opportunities vary.
The Maine School of Science and Mathematics (MSSM)
After my first book, 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options was published in 2005 (originally titled Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind), I was invited to visit a state residential high school, the Maine School of Science and Mathematics (MSSM), to provide faculty development after the school’s director heard me speak at a conference for educational administrators about the Levels of Gifted.
The state legislature voted for and financially supported the creation and costs of this new residential high school. The students came from all over the state and were identified as being gifted by their course grades and teacher recommendations. The school sought my assistance because they were perplexed by how different the students selected to enroll were from one another in their school performance.
Problems Arose
Individual faculty members described their issues with how the students were doing. I learned the initial acceptance and entry requirements included no ability measures beyond grades and achievement positions in their referring schools. In other words, all the selected students were the top performers in their schools from all over the state. Not all schools are the same, and not all school populations are the same. The children at MSSM came from a wide variety of communities and schools.
The school had gathered no ability test scores as part of their selection and screening process. I recommended that the school give students a common group “IQ” test, the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test,[iii] to the entire student body.
The resulting scores surprised the teachers and administrators because they showed an IQ range of 100 (average for the test and average for the national population) to 150 (the top of this test). Some of their students had average ability profiles, some were exceptionally to profoundly gifted (generally 145-150 on this scale), and the rest were in between in their intellectual abilities.
The IQ scores mapped nearly perfectly onto what the faculty members saw among their students. They had expected everyone was equally intelligent and capable and were floored by the results. The criteria for admission included high grades and teacher recommendations. It did not include any standardized tests of intellectual ability. The teachers’ personal views on giftedness being about “good grades” is described in the Maggie Brown Delphi Study in the What is Giftedness? section of my 2023 book.[iv] And this was part of what confused the teachers when the high grade-getting students didn’t always handle the new material they were receiving very well.
Ta-Da! The Reasons Behind Some Differences Appeared
Why the faculty was struggling was finally explained: their students were not all equally capable or ready for the material the teachers were presenting. However, this did not mean that the less prepared and lower-scoring students could not eventually handle and benefit from the material. The best education and schooling doesn’t eventually make everyone the same in their intellectual abilities; the goal is to bring out the best in each person and develop them to the best of their abilities.
In this instance, good surprises did show up. The teachers had underestimated almost as many children as they overestimated and were able to meet the needs of those students better, as well.
I encourage readers to read the story behind the amazing, eye-opening work of Jaime Escalante. One good source is by Jay Mathews (1989).[v] Escalante was a teacher and school principal who taught inner city, predominantly Hispanic students, calculus. The movie Stand and Deliver was about him and his students. Under Escalante’s superior teaching and attention, the students learned so well they also excelled on college entrance exams and Advanced Placement exams. A very high percentage of them gained scholarships and admission to top-tiered universities. Escalante was clear that such success came from hard work on the part of the teacher as well as the students.
Related to what Jay Mathews pointed out, when one adds the concept of Mindset (Dweck, 2006),[vi] where anyone can reach higher levels when we are taught to believe in our ability to do so, and any student can reach higher levels of learning success than they—and sometimes others around them—previously thought possible.
In the case of the Maine School, how this misidentification could play out depended on the child in question. The one child who scored 100 on the OLSAT came from a small rural town and he was now in a state legislature all-paid residential STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) school, chosen for his being the most obviously bright and promising student in his age group at his small-town public school. This boy had abilities that had not been adequately supported in his original school. His OLSAT is possibly a low estimate of his abilities.
But the real issue for the small-town boy is that he deserves an education that fits[vii] him.
“Goodness of Fit”: how a trait or condition interacts, e.g., giftedness or personality, with the environment and how it interacts with the person or other people in that environment. Any trait in and of itself is not a problem; rather, it is the interaction that determines the “acceptability” of that trait.
The Maine School could create small groups and individual tutoring for students who score lower or who are behind the larger group. If you think about it, there are so many career fields that depend on one’s math and science sense that it is good for a mostly rural state like Maine to ensure support for the development of future state and regional auditors or statisticians, for example. The school could and should provide more of what any of their students need, not only the high-performing on ability tests students.
Publicly supported schools like MSSM can meet the needs of a range of students who have shown themselves to have talent in math and science.
It requires flexible readiness grouping and regrouping. Readiness means the student has received instruction and other support that makes them ready for the learning environment into which they are placed.
Flexible grouping and regrouping is a way to provide that support. Students are moved into a class or tutoring section that works with other students who are at about the same readiness level, too. As different students show a need to either move on or still need more support, the students are flexibly regrouped—or moved into another setting to continue to make progress. Sometimes the “flexible grouping” is tutoring support at both the higher and lower ends of the ability—and readiness—continuum in the school each year.
What About the Highest Level Learners?
There were also children at the school who scored in the mid-to-upper 140s on the test. These were the students that the school was originally designed for and intended to serve.
But if a school is specially designed to provide true peers, real competition, and fast and deep pacing of subject matter, the students in the very top ranges of intellect and ability have to be grouped together for it to be effective.
The option I suggested for this school is that groups of learners move together through the curriculum in smaller groups of students who are grouped by their readiness or ability for the same pace and depth and conversation about the subjects.
Additionally, there was a girl at MSSM, one of the top scorers on the IQ test, who wanted to switch to English Literature because she loved language, reading, and writing. But the school wouldn’t allow her to do this because she was at a STEM school. There wasn’t a special school for her interests and her personally preferred talents, so she had to decide whether to stay with the excellent STEM opportunity or go back to her old school.
Again, such an elite, special school should have a way to include other important subjects rather than have a brilliant young student foreclose on her future by choosing or not choosing a STEM school, especially if it were the only available option.
Unfortunately, the headmaster who hired me left the school before we finished working together on next steps. The situation in this school is common in most schools for the gifted because—among many of the reasons and causes—there are many roadblocks to making everything work without being accused of elitism and unfairness to those who have not qualified for limited spaces in schools and programs.
[i] See more information about the NYC public schools here https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/4/6/23013451/nyc-gifted-and-talented-programs-admissions-changes
[ii] See Ripley, A. (2013). The smartest kids in the world and how they got that way. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
[iii] The Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) is a multiple-choice K-12 assessment that measures reasoning skills with several different types of verbal, non-verbal, figural, and quantitative reasoning questions. It is designed to assess a child’s performance across a wide variety of reasoning skillsets.
[iv] Ruf, D. (2023). The 5 levels of gifted children grown up: What they tell us. 5 LoG Press. https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH
[v] Matthews, J. (1989). Escalante: The best teacher in America. Henry Holt & Co.
[vi] Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Ballentine Books.
[vii] I often use the term “fit” or “good fit” or “best fit.” Blending many definitions together, there are two types of “best fit” and the more familiar term “Goodness of Fit”: how a trait or condition interacts, e.g., giftedness or personality, with the environment and how it interacts with the person or other people in that environment. Any trait in and of itself is not a problem; rather, it is the interaction that determines the “acceptability” of that trait.
My current published books about the gifted:
The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023). https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709. This is an 18 year longitudinal study follow-up about the original gifted child subjects in 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009).
Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child (2023). Keys to Successfully Parenting Gifted Children (2022, 2023)
Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (October 2024). Available for e-book pre-order until then. Follow this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHV6QT6F
5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options in 2009. Here are links to the 5 Levels of Gifted book on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/5-levels-of-gifted-deborah-ruf/1126358834 and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-School-Educational-Options/dp/0910707987 or directly from the publisher: https://www.giftedunlimitedllc.com/store/p12/5_Levels_of_Gifted.html
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