High School Looks for Gifted Students

Roosevelt High School is beefing up its list of gifted students by going through academic records one by one.

Other schools in the area also routinely try to identify students as gifted to qualify them for special classes and more individualized attention, but Roosevelt Asst. Principal Rita Hymes made it a priority by hiring a college student to work part time to go through each student’s test scores and grades.

In two weeks, the school has identified eight students for the gifted program, Hymes said. They are now in separate classes for gifted students or in clusters within regular classrooms.

“We don’t have a lot of kids who are identified as gifted,” Hymes said, adding that about 100 of Roosevelt’s 4,100 students are in the special programs. “We want to identify a few hundred more and I think we can.”

Eastside schools have more students identified as gifted than in other areas of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said Sheila Smith, district coordinator for the gifted programs. She credits Assistant Supervisor Evangelina Stockwell’s interest in the gifted programs and a desire to educate parents about the programs.

For example, Smith said, Stockwell has insisted on obtaining bilingual information so parents know what to look for in their children to test for the gifted programs.

“Parents often need to know that sometimes behavior in their children that may appear negative is really a sign that they’re gifted, such as talking too much, asking too many questions, asking questions that seem divergent and daydreaming,” Smith said. “Another indicator is that other children come to that (gifted) child for leadership.”

Because of language barriers, many of the students at Roosevelt have been identified as being gifted in math but not in other subjects, Hymes said.

Students must have a B-plus average for three years in a particular subject or score in the 75th percentile in achievement tests, as well as a recommendation from a teacher or counselor, to be identified as gifted. Some students identified as having the potential to perform well in a subject but who have been scoring poor grades are classified as “gifted underachievers.”

The school receives $60 for each student in the program, which teachers use to buy materials and books, and to take the students on field trips.