Parents Seek Changes in Chaparral Middle School Gifted Program : Moorpark: The students should be given separate classes and greater academic challenges, families say.

A group of Moorpark parents whose children have been identified as gifted are waging a philosophical battle with school officials over how best to educate such students.

The complaints are specifically aimed at the treatment of students in the Gifted and Talented Education program at Chaparral Middle School, the 5,500-student district’s only middle school.

Parents criticize the district for placing gifted middle-school students in regular classes instead of separating them from the rest of the student body and offering them greater academic challenges. About 150 of Chaparral’s approximately 1,300 students participate in the program.

“What the parents would like to see is an honors program at Chaparral that would allow the (gifted) children and even honors children to participate in their own accelerated program,” said Cynthia Worth, whose son Justin is entering the fifth grade at Flory School and will participate in the Chaparral program in the fall of 1994.

“Noboby minds ability-grouping in sports,” Worth said. “Nobody says, ‘Gee, you’re too good a pitcher, we’re going to put you in left field.’ ”

But school officials said they have been reluctant to lump the gifted sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students into their own academic unit for fear of isolating the group and compromising social and emotional development for scholastic achievement.

“The philosophical underpinnings of middle school are focusing on the whole child,” Supt. Tom Duffy said. “The belief is that the better way to do that is through a heterogeneous instead of homogeneous model.”

Chaparral Principal Mike Berger acknowledged that his school’s program for gifted students was not as effective as it could have been last year, because only three to five of the students were placed in each regular classroom and teachers were not trained properly on how to work with them.

This year, eight to 10 gifted students will be placed in each class, and the district is spending more money on staff development so teachers will do a better job of challenging high-achievers. Berger also said he has created a new position for a teacher who will alternate among the regular classes and work specifically with gifted students and other high-achievers for one to five periods a week.

“I think their kids are going to get an excellent education,” Berger said. “They’re being taught in a way that my professional staff desires to teach them.”

But Worth, who complained to the school board last week that parents were not being allowed input into their children’s educational experience, said the planned changes don’t go far enough.

“It’s woefully inadequate,” she said. “They keep adding bells and whistles to it, but it still keeps boiling down to the same kind of school-day experience for these children.”

Worth and a group of concerned parents submitted a plan to the district last week that would have created a voluntary honors program at Chaparral. In response to the plan, and their complaints, the school board instructed its administration to work with the parents and consider their plan--which was rejected by the district staff.

“There’s obviously support on the board to have some concessions made,” board President Pam Castro said. “We’ve got to be open, we’ve got to be innovative. . . . The worst we can do is just fail as badly as the administration has admitted the current program has failed.”

Alan Fields, whose son Brian will enter eighth grade this fall at Chaparral, said the district has consistently defended the mainstreaming of gifted students as a way to socialize them.

“I’m not worried about him being socialized, he can be socialized in Little League and Cub Scouts,” Fields said. “I’m worried about education.”

Assistant Supt. Frank DePasquale said Berger has agreed to evaluate the success of the changes to the program five weeks into the school year. He said the district has been willing to work with the parents on modifying the program and has thus far failed only to grant their demand for an entirely segregated learning experience.

“I think the parents have had a significant impact on the district’s decision to change the program,” DePasquale said. “The program is evolving.”