Gift to the Gifted

The problem haunting St. Louis school officials was unfortunately familiar to urban school systems the country over: What to do with gifted students? Bogged down in large classes and forced to move at a slow learner's pace, they were wasting both their time and their talents.

St. Louis' answer, described last week by officials at an opening-of-school conference, could well provide a pattern for harried administrators attempting to cope with the problem in other cities and towns.

Sixth to Ninth. Without clear precedents to guide them, St. Louis educators arbitrarily set an IQ of 130 (very superior) as the dividing line between the average and the gifted student. Candidates for the special classes were identified by means of IQ tests given to all children in fourth grade. Those who scored no or better were given additional IQ tests shortly before they were due to enter sixth grade, assigned to nine special classrooms strategically scattered throughout the school system if they scored 130 or above on the latter tests and proved "socially adjusted." In the special classrooms they were given regular sixth-grade work, beefed up with generous advanced assignments in foreign languages and the sciences.

Although St. Louis started testing for gifted students three years ago, only one batch of 250 gifted sixth-graders (out of the 7,000 or so youngsters who reach sixth grade each year) has been exposed to the advanced program so far. How has it affected them? In natural sciences, science reading and vocabulary the gifted sixth-graders moved from average ninth-grade work to work comparable to that done by the upper fourth of ninth-grade classes.

Just as gratifying to St. Louis School Superintendent Philip J. Hickey was the fact that the gifted students vastly accelerated their social development (thus seeming to refute the theory that isolation of the intellectually gifted tends, to stunt their social growth). With a new batch of gifted sixth-graders starting the program this fall and last year's special sixth-graders moving on to special "seventh"-grade classes, nine new classrooms are being set aside for advanced work. Next fall a third set of nine classrooms will be added to carry the program on through the junior-high-school level.

Halting the Loss. Superintendent Hickey freely acknowledges that the program is still experimental and subject to substantial revision. St. Louis has not yet determined what to do with its gifted sixth-graders when they reach high school. Even the curriculum is likely to be revised as the program's administrators gain more experience. But to Hickey and the others working with him, the important fact is that a start has been made toward halting the loss of brainpower which St. Louis, in common with other, cities, has suffered through failure to detect top talent.

"At last we're taking the smart kids," said one administrator last week, "and giving them a challenge fully worth their attention."

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