District cuts could impact Garfield's high achievers

A plan by Seattle Public Schools to take academically gifted students at Garfield High School and disperse them to their neighborhood high schools has angered their parents.

Currently, all gifted students are automatically assigned to Garfield, one of the city's most popular high schools, and one of the state's most prolific sources of National Merit Scholars.

But within a sweeping cost-saving plan floated by the district earlier this week is a proposal to take students in Garfield's Accelerated Progress Program (APP) and send them to their neighborhood schools. While Garfield would continue to have gifted students, the majority would be spread across the rest of the district's high schools.

By sending these students to their neighborhood schools, the district avoids busing students to one school from all over the city.

Most Seattle high schools offer Advanced Placement classes, with some offering more than others. Garfield offers the most because it is home to APP.

Because the majority of APP students are middle-class, there is some concern that by changing the program, the district could prompt more middle-class families to send their children to private schools.

All of the roughly 1,500 students in APP are admitted after testing in the 98th or 99th percentile nationally in cognitive ability and reading and math skills. These children are highly gifted academically and learn very differently and at a much faster rate than regular students, educators say.

The district's gifted kids currently can spend their entire education together — going from Lowell Elementary to Washington Middle School to Garfield High School.

If the proposal is approved, APP students already at Garfield would be permitted to graduate there. But current APP sixth-graders at Washington would not be automatically assigned to Garfield in the 2007-08 school year; they would be assigned to their neighborhood high school or could apply for a seat at Garfield.

A new set of tiebreakers would give first preference to those with Garfield siblings, followed by those from low-income families and lastly by lottery.

The district proposed the change this week as part of a wide-ranging restructuring plan that, if approved by the School Board in July, would close 10 campuses, convert or expand 14 others and stop providing yellow-bus service to high-school students. The plan has angered a diverse array of interests, including those upset that the plan would limit school choice.

The changes to APP follow the district's overarching goals of confronting a chronic budget deficit, promoting greater equity and increasing the quality of all high schools.

The community's "expectations for social justice have changed" in the past 20 years, School Board President Brita Butler-Wall said yesterday about the plan's aims.

"Some children are getting a wonderful education," she said. "That's not necessarily the case throughout the city. The overall plan here moves us in a direction that is much more fair," she said.

Jane Fellner, a parent who chairs the district's APP task force, said she believed the proposal could destroy APP, push parents toward private schools, and prove harmful to the well-being of academically gifted children.

"APP over 20 years has been a very successful learning community with teachers who have worked together collaboratively, with strong parent support," Fellner said. "The plan to increase AP offerings at all of our high schools is long overdue and a resource problem. ... But that's not synonymous with destroying the APP cohort at Garfield."

Fellner said those who propose to sprinkle the APP students across the district's high schools don't understand the history of the program and the work Garfield has had to do to meet their needs.

"A few AP classes in another high school is not the same," she said.

Colleen Stump, the district's APP manager, fears the dispersed students would be stigmatized by their peers in other high schools and become frustrated with both the pace and level of their classes: Even offering the APP students an Advanced Placement class in another high school would be a very different experience for them if the majority of their classmates aren't academically gifted.

"They've always been together," she said. "I think what people are hoping is that they could positively increase the academic rigor by their presence. They would raise the bar."

While research in the 1980s suggested that pairing high achievers with low achievers could raise performance, the literature in the 1990s has refuted that notion, Stump said.

"The research focus has been on the importance of high achievers having access to intellectual peers," Stump said.

Michelle Corker-Curry, who oversees the district's programs for student populations with special needs, said she believes it will take the district two to four years to offer the same rich variety of Advanced Placement available at Garfield in every high school.

It remains unclear how Seattle would ramp up its high schools to get there. The district has to look at whether it has the teachers qualified to offer the courses citywide and, if not, how it could deliver the instruction citywide without spending more on buses.

"It is going to be a challenge," Corker-Curry said. "I think locally and nationally we'll be watched. Imagine Rainier Beach, West Seattle, [and] Sealth having as many National Merit Scholars as Garfield has had in the past."

Savings from the broader restructuring will initially help the district address a $20 million budget gap in 2006-07. In the long run, the savings will compound annually, creating a stream of revenue available for other uses, district officials say.

Superintendent Raj Manhas said yesterday that for every $1 million the district could avoid spending on maintaining buildings and running buses, it could pay for 20 teachers. The overall proposal would save the district $2.64 million in the first year, $3.23 million in the second.

When bus service is cut back starting the third year, the proposal would save the district about $5.2 million annually, officials said.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com