RoLExample1.docx

Exerpt from Gifted Learners in the Education Accountability Era by DeAnna R. Miller

Chapter 2: Literature Review
This study sought to describe both the amount of and type of accommodated instruction that gifted students receive in their classrooms in a four-school district consortium in rural Kentucky. As a descriptive qualitative case study, this study sought to describe the education of gifted students in the educational Accountability Era based on the perspective of the teachers drawing from these teachers’ lived teaching experiences in meeting the needs of gifted learners in their classrooms. In this four-school district consortium, if the evidence provided by this study is not deemed acceptable by the teachers and administrators in meeting the needs of gifted learners, then this study served as a platform to initiate change in the gifted education opportunities in regular, mixed ability classrooms. The researcher aimed to provide a precise description of gifted learners’ education in for teachers and administrators to have criteria on which to base changes in their gifted education program. This study describes the educational accommodations being provided to gifted learners from the perceptions of teachers.

Documentation
A review of literature was completed in to determine what is currently known about the relationship between the NCLB, the Waiver, gifted education and teacher perceptions. The majority of resources for the review of the literature were found using ProQuest, Ebsco Host, Gale Academic OneFile, Northcentral University Library and Google Scholar research databases. Gifted education program standards and teacher perceptions were researched in to gain understanding on the impact of educational laws and gifted education, No Child Left Behind, the No Child Left Behind Flexibility Waiver, gifted student and high achieving student assessment. Various phrases and terminology appeared in the initial research such as “differentiated instruction”; “truly left behind”; “consequences for gifted education”; “state determined proficiency levels”; “teacher perceptions”; “NCLB Waiver”; and “bringing all students to proficiency”. These phrases were used to determine the themes of this brief review of literature. Teacher perceptions of gifted education in the classroom were included in the literature review in to review the research previously conducted on this topic due to the importance of teacher perception in this study.
Table 1

Research Databases Used for Review of Literature

Search Engine

Number of Resources Obtained

Ebsco Host

20

Gale Academic OneFile

17

Google Scholar

26

NorthCentral University Library

4

ProQuest

101

Brief Historical Overview of the No Child Left Behind Act
Americans can pride themselves on the idea of equality and this is especially true in an education system which offers equal opportunity for all students (Aske, Connolly, & Corman, 2013). The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed in 1965 in an effort to provide equality in education throughout the United States and has been reauthorized on a five year basis since its inception (Husband & Hunt, 2015; Tavakolian & Howell, 2012). This law called for both an elementary and secondary education for all children. The law required funding to schools for teacher training, programs and materials for education. With the subsequent enactment of the No Child Left Behind improvements in student achievement was expected. The NCLB Act was finally enacted as a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Brighton et al., 2015; Tavakolian & Howell, 2012). The NCLB Act brought about radical changes that the education field had not seen with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Aske et al., 2013; Ravitch, 2011; Tavakolian & Howell, 2012). The NCLB Act required all states to not only define a level of proficiency for state mandated achievement tests but also required states to implement a plan that would bring all students to that proficiency level (Aske et al., 2013; Husband & Hunt, 2015). Schools were required to notify parents if the classroom teacher was not deemed “highly qualified” by the state (Croft, Roberts, & Stenhouse, 2016). This was requirement was not present in the previous Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The NCLB Act was the dawning of the Accountability Era that currently drives schools in the United States.
When the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was signed into law in January 2002, bipartisan support saw this federal legislation as a pathway to improving the American education system. NCLB introduced America to accountability in a way that had not previously been seen (Ravitch, 2011). The law called for accountability through a variety of means: improved assessment scores, an enhanced focus on reading and math, and an urgent call for all students to reach the proficient achievement level on assessments with the level of proficiency to be determined by individual states. The Act had a commendable intention of closing the achievement gap between the lower scoring students and the higher scoring students (Brighton et al., 2015; Jhang, 2011; McNeal, 2012; Samuel & Suh, 2012). American educators cautiously accepted the challenge to improve education based on these mandated changes.
NCLB called for all schools to make annual improvements for all students on a continual basis until 100% of the student population scored at the proficient level (Husband & Hunt, 2015; McNeal, 2012; Samuel & Suh, 2012). The NCLB Act demanded proficiency levels of achievement to be met by all students on state accountability tests regardless of a student’s ability level or diagnosed disabilities (Aske et al., 2013; Jhang, 2011; Ravitch, 2011; Samuel & Suh, 2012). The proficiency level of each school would be determined by student scores on an annual assessment. K-12 Schools were charged with showing an increase each year over the previous year’s assessment scores (Hargrove, 2013; McNeal, 2012; Samuel & Suh, 2012; Tavakolian & Howell, 2012). This increase was expected to be continued until all students scored at the proficient level.
The NCLB Act did not set a level of proficiency but instead required all states to determine proficiency levels for their schools (McNeal, 2012; Samuel & Suh, 2012). In Kentucky, achievement levels were changed to measure as Distinguished (90% or higher), Proficient (70-89%), Apprentice (60-69%) and Novice (below 60%). This meant that with NCLB, the goal was to move all students’ scores in all tested areas to the 70% or higher (Kentucky Department of Education, 2015). America’s educational accountability basis turned from curriculum to testing (Hargrove, 2013; Ravitch, 2011). This was a rigorous goal for all schools, but especially for schools with a high number of at-risk students.
The NCLB Act enforced school accountability with several measures that was new to education (Husband & Hunt, 2015, U.S. Department of Education, 2015, Popham, 2013). In 2002, K-12 schools were required to only employ “highly qualified” teachers to bring high quality instruction into American classrooms through faculty members (Gishey, 2013). These highly qualified teachers were required to use instructional strategies and materials that had shown research-based success. The result of this process resulted in a commercialized promotion of brands. A teacher gained the status of “highly qualified” by earning a state awarded certification as a teacher, passing the teaching exam, such as the PRAXIS, chosen by the state teacher certification organization or have a college degree with a major in the subject area that they are teaching (Kentucky Department of Education, 2015; U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Until this new requirement brought on by the NCLB Act, teachers were considered as qualified educators by earning the certification requirements in the state in which they were employed (Gishey, 2013). The NCLB Act’s intention of the “highly qualified” teacher status in the legislation was for schools to have quality teachers, which when coupled with research based teaching strategies and materials, would improve student achievement and therefore close the gap between struggling students and high achieving students (Buchanan, 2015; Gishey, 2013). The new term of “highly qualified” did not sit well with teachers who felt that they were highly qualified upon earning a teaching certificate (Croft et al., 2016).
Most studies agreed, at the time of implementation and even now as the evidence of the NCLB Act is criticized, that the NCLB legislation was arguably the most significant educational legislation to surface in the last forty years (Croft et al., 2016; Dee & Jacob, 2010; Husband & Hunt, 2015). Unintended results in gifted education and also other education groups quickly surfaced due to the NCLB Act (Husband & Hunt, 2015). The No Child Left Behind Act was intended to raise education standards by holding all schools responsible for the performance of every student (Jhang, 2011; McNeal, 2013; Tavakolian & Howell, 2012); however, Husband and Hunt (2015), Pinder, (2013), and Samuel and Suh (2012) have all suggested that it could have held back students with rigid measures. As the regulations for the NCLB Act were implemented, Pinder (2013) found that teachers saw their attention being focused on students who were close to achieving the proficient level but even more on the lower level students who had a very small chance of ever achieving proficiency on assessments. Because of the perceived punitive character of this federal law, educators struggled to meet their testing targets (Husband & Hunt, 2015; Pinder, 2013; Tavakolian & Howell, 2012). As they focused their time and attention to meeting the proficient achievement level for all students, many schools had reduced instructional time for the arts, history, sciences, civics, foreign languages, physical education, literature, and geography. The instructional time was devoted to preparing students for the state tests in basic skills (Husband & Hunt, 2015; Ravitch, 2011). Dee et al. (2010) completed a study that linked an improvement in math scores for fourth grade students to the No Child Left Behind Act. Supporters of NCLB took this opportunity to spread the good news.
Unlike any other educational legislation to date, NCLB started out with a goal. The Act mandated that all of America’s students be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014 (Husband & Hunt, 2015; McNeal, 2013; Ravitch, 2011). Any school not meeting this rigorous goal —one never reached by any nation in the world — faced a series of sanctions imposed by the NCLB Act. As 2014 drew closer, tens of thousands of schools were determined as failures, thousands of educators were fired, and schools that were once the anchors of their communities were closed due to the sanctions enforced by the NCLB Act (Black, 2015; Husband & Hunt, 2015; McNeal, 2013; Ravitch, 2011). Ravitch (2011) declared that the once promising NCLB was turning into a timetable for the destruction of public education. Changes had to be made to ensure the success of American education (Ravitch, 2011).
States put much effort into the plans prepared to implement the rigorous demands of the NCLB Act and waited for approval or a request for amendments from the United States Department of Education. On June 10, 2003, Kentucky was granted conditional approval by the United States Department of Education of Kentucky’s state plan for implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirements. To date Kentucky has selected and implemented goals that were shared with those of the NCLB Act including high expectations for all students; rigorous student performance standards tied to annual assessments in grades 3-8; multiple assessments tied to the core content; school accountability; student and school performance information to parents in the form of school report cards; and, a goal of proficiency in 12 years by the year 2014 (Kentucky Department of Education, 2011). Kentucky’s plan for meeting Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) did not mention gifted education and did not propose changing gifted education throughout the state in to promote gifted learners (Kentucky Department of Education, 2011). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that drives special education, which is the educational umbrella that gifted education falls under, does not mention gifted education in the legislation (U.S. Department of Education, 2015).
Two studies completed by the Thomas D. Fordham Institute on high-achieving students in the era of the No Child Left Behind Act brought about much discussion between the original NCLB Act and gifted education. The authors of the first study examined achievement trends for high-achieving students that were found to be stagnant (Loveless et al., 2008). The second study reported on teachers’ views of how schools serving high-achieving students in the era of NCLB (see Teacher Perceptions of Gifted Education section of Literature Review.) Loveless et al. reported that scores from students in the bottom ten percent of achievement have made continuous progress in the content areas of reading and math on fourth grade assessments and in the content area of mathematics on eighth grade assessments between 2000 and 2007 but this was not found true for students at the upper ten percentile. Students at the top 10% of achievement made minimal gains in those seven years (Loveless et al., 2008). The trend of large achievement growth for struggling students and minimal, if any, achievement growth for high ability students has been the pattern since the introduction of accountability programs with the NCLB Act affecting the largest number of schools because of the federal mandate brought on by the enactment of this law (Bui et al., 2012; Loveless et al., 2008; Olszewski-Kubilius, Subotnik, & Worrell, 2015).
Many supporters of gifted education blamed the lack of focus on this particular group of students on the federal legislation of the No Child Left Behind Act. Stephens and Riggsbee (2007), Husband and Hunt (2015), and Samardzija and Peterson (2015) provided studies which argued that gifted students lose their passion for education as they become bored waiting for opportunities to be challenged in the classroom while the educational focus is placed on the lower level learners due to the NCLB Act. The present study, Gifted Education in the Accountability Era, provided qualitative data showing the quantity and types of challenging opportunities provided to gifted students in a rural public educational setting.
Not everyone interested in public education projects negative feelings about the NCLB Act. Despite growing grumbles about NCLB, high-stakes testing intensified once President Obama took office (Au & Gourd, 2013). The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, issued a report that reviews the progress made under the NCLB Act (Zimmer, et al., 2007). The Rand Corporation recommended for change in the NCLB Act but gave examples of how this federal legislation was producing positive results. Recommendations included promoting more uniform academic standards to eliminate inconsistency across states such as the adoption of the National Common Core Standards, promoting more uniform teacher qualification requirements so that states will set high standards for teachers, and setting more appropriate student improvement targets that incorporate growth (“Exploring Ideas in Gifted Education,” 2011). Ravitch (2013) found evidence contrary to this. Ravitch (2013) argued that achievement gaps had unexpectedly increased since the implementation of an accountability system which was based primarily on test scores. Ravitch (2013) described the treatment of gap category children as punitive rather than equally inclusive by the Accountability Era.
Despite the negativity that NCLB drew, this legislation changed education to expose large achievement gaps between sub-groups based on gender, race and income in comparison to the general student population. Low achieving student sub-groups were recognized as being underserved and the national called for improvement (Nelson-Royes, 2013; Spellings, 2014). Although the NCLB Act was not implemented with absolute effectiveness, the attention on education was now drawn nationwide (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). The NCLB Act was scheduled to be reauthorized in 2007, but that did not happen (Howell, 2015). The NCLB Act hung in the air for 2 years until President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that included a stimulus program for education. Out of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act came the competitive Race to the Top funding for schools (Croft et al., 2016). The reauthorization of NCLB fell out of focus as educators competed for billions of dollars in Race to the Top money but the requirements of the NCLB Act still lingered over schools causing the stress of accountability for administrators, teachers, students and parents to remain (Howell, 2015). Now that important issues had been discovered during NCLB, it was time to make improvements to the law that was driving education in the United States.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act Waiver
With every year that passed without a reauthorization of NCLB, frustration grew among educators tied to the requirements still in place by the 2002 law (Black, 2015; Howell, 2015; Husband & Hunt, 2015). In February 2012, Kentucky was one of ten states that received approval from the U.S. Department of Education for a Waiver that excused the state from the requirements of the NCLB Act (Kentucky Department of Education, 2015; Rodriguez, 2014; U.S. Department of Education, 2015). The Elementary and Secondary Education Act flexibility, more commonly known as the NCLB Waiver, called for detailed plans from the applying state. The Waiver had to include plans to not only reduce achievement gaps between student sub-groups but close the existing gaps (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). The Waiver had to include a plan to increase the quality of instruction that would be provided to all students and increase achievement outcomes for all students (Black, 2015; Husband & Hunt, 2015, Pinder, 2013). The Waiver held on to the American dream of equality for all as the plan was required to demonstrate how the state would increase equity in all schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2015).
Not only did the Waiver call for more rigor in areas of improvement already addressed in the NCLB Act, it called for a new area of improvement with the introduction of highly qualified teachers. Teachers felt the pressure that they experienced with the NCLB Act continue as the Waiver required that teachers would not only be evaluated by their supervisor but also in their effectiveness (Black, 2015; Pinder, 2013; Popham, 2013). The Waiver introduced the use of state-mandated test results for teacher evaluation and to determine schools to be successful (Au & Gourd, 2013; Black, 2015; Croft et al., 2016; Popham, 2013). The accountability of teachers became tied to the achievement of their students’ performance on a standardized test (Black, 2015; Croft et al., 2016; Popham, 2013). Teacher accountability would allow the public to point fingers at successful teachers and non-successful teachers based on their effectiveness at increasing student performance (Black, 2015; Croft et al., 2016). According to Dr. Terry Holliday, Commissioner of Education for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Kentucky’s Waiver included even more rigorous requirements that would prove successful in closing the achievement gap and preparing all students for a college education or career (Kentucky Department of Education, 2011). In 2014, Kentucky received an extension of their original waiver (Kentucky Department of Education, 2015; Rodriguez, 2014; U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Kentucky reached for the reputation of being an educational leader a second time despite the rigorous demands of the Waiver.
With the demands of the Waiver, K-12 education became a system that evaluates student achievement results rather than a system that considers the equal interests of all students (Aske et al., 2013; VanTassel-Baska, 2012; Wiggan, 2014). Teachers felt pressure to put student test scores in their frontline of focus due to the test scores of students being reflective in teacher evaluations under the NCLB Waiver (Black, 2015; Croft et al., 2016; Pinder, 2013; Popham, 2013). Brighton et al. (2015) found that teachers did not always feel comfortable with the changes to the evaluation system due to causes outside of the school system that often affect student achievement such as poverty and student disabilities. Teacher unions voiced displeasure with the changes in the Waiver (Prescher & Werle, 2014). The unions were especially displeased with the decisions affecting teacher evaluation (Prescher & Werle, 2014). Public opinion of education was not improved by the Waiver but instead questioned more frequently.

The Future of the Accountability Era
On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the bipartisan supported bill titled Every Student Succeeds Act into law in to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). The Every Student Succeeds Act will be enacted during the 2017-2018 school year. This legislation will bring about many welcome changes to the NCLB era. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, individual states will be allowed to choose their own achievement goals and interventions for accountability improvements. Decisions on what content areas students will be tested in, what grade level high school students are test in and how to improve any areas of concern will be made at the state level. States will experience a sense of accountability freedom as long as four predetermined goals are included in the state’s accountability plan (Klein, 2015). Three of these four goals will ensure that accountability is here to stay.
The first requirement for a state’s accountability plan was that at least one goal focused on students scoring proficiency on the accountability test. The test will be chosen at the state level. All students in grades three through eight must be tested in the content areas of mathematics and reading annually and at least one time in high school. ESSA will require schools and districts to report on sub-groups of students as they did during NCLB (Klein, 2015).
Teachers are hesitant to not conform to the drive to increase test scores. To do so can result in low evaluations and put the teacher at risk of losing his job (Black, 2015; Croft et al., 2016; Mintrop, 2012; Pinder, 2013). The NCLB Act called for schools that failed to meet annual goals on a persistent schedule undergo sanction options. One of the sanctions required the school to release faculty members and administrators that were deemed responsible for the school’s continuous failure (McNeal, 2012). Although tenured faculty members normally are assured employment, the NCLB Act did not take tenure into consideration when corrections for school failure had to be made.
Both supporters and critics alike can agree that accountability demands quickly bring changes in education (Mintrop, 2012). Accountability is on the forefront of topics when education is discussed. Henderson, Peterson, and West (2016) found that using accountability data to score teachers’ performances is the largest issue discussed when the Accountability Era was considered by Congress in 2015. Spellings (2014) argued that successful schools with high student achievement growth depend on the accountability demands of mandated assessments. Yet the public does not seem to agree with this practice. Henderson et al. (2016) reported that based on recent surveys the public’s support of teachers has declined in recent years. Schools, school district and states are continuously striving to make gains in accountability scores. Even as the NCLB Act became a thing of the past, the Accountability Era that was created by this legislation lingers. My study, Gifted Education in the Accountability Era, provided qualitative data of teachers’ perspectives about how the stress of accountability influences the quantity and types of best practice opportunities that they provide for gifted students in their classrooms.

Gifted Students’ Characteristics and Needs
Although there are between three to five million gifted students in the United States, identification procedures of gifted students vary from state to state and even from school district to school district (National Association for Gifted Children, 2015). The development of gifted education programs occurred in the 1920s and identification of a gifted student was determined by using the score from an intelligence test, such as the Stanford-Binet IQ test (Missett & McCormick, 2014; National Association for Gifted Children, 2015; Seedorf, 2014). Many states and individual school districts now use a Norm Referenced Test score as only a portion of the evidence gathered to identify a student as gifted / talented. There seems to be two different views on the identification of gifted students: one group who thinks that giftedness is solely intellectual and therefore should be identified with an IQ test score and another group that thinks that giftedness should include talents such as leadership and creativity in addition to intelligence and this status should be identified with a variety of evidence that adequately indicated the talent (Esquierdo & Arreguin-Anderson, 2012; Schmitt & Goebel, 2015). Schmitt and Goebel suggested that a mixture of identification methods be used to appropriately identify gifted students in to prevent a gifted learner from being overlooked by use of a single method. Each state has the authority to consider whatever means of identification that is determined to be sufficient.
There is a federal definition of gifted students that is currently located in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It defines gifted as
students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in to fully develop those capabilities. (U.S. Department of Education, 2015).

Gifted students are viewed as the students who require accommodated educational services beyond the normal education due to their high academic ability in for them to realize their full potential and most students are identified as gifted or talented at the elementary school level (Colangelo & Wood (A), 2015). Often when these gifted students who were identified in elementary school enter middle and high school, teachers do not see gifted traits in these students and question their identification.
Regardless of the manner in which students were identified as gifted, teachers tend to notice specific characteristics that are common among these high ability students. The most common characteristic of gifted children is their advanced cognitive ability (Baudson & Preckel, 2013; Preckel & Vock, 2012). Gifted students benefit from being challenged and motivated through their school work. The challenge of an activity drives the interest of many gifted students and motivates them to persevere (Repinc & Juznic, 2013). Research has found that motivation in students is an important factor in increasing their academic talents (Ahmad, Badusah, Mansor, & Karim, 2014). Gifted students deem work that is not a challenge to them to be busy work. Gifted students view busy work as a waste of time (Cooper, 2012). When gifted students do not feel challenged by instruction or educational content, they often feel like it is not worth their time to participate. Some gifted students feel that even if they do not know the material that they can manage their way through it without much effort if the content is not challenging for them. Students who felt that they are valuable to the class and that they are believed in are more likely to be a motivated learner (Ford, 2015; Mammadov & Topçu, 2014). Students were successful when they embrace challenges and could foresee how the challenge would benefit them in the future (Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2015). This was a good example of the importance for a teacher to know and inspire her students on an individual basis. Teachers must know the academic ability of each student in to accomplish this task.
When gifted students do not perform throughout the school year at the level at which they performed on achievement assessments for the purpose of gifted identification, they are sometimes referred to as an underachieving student (Ritchotte et al., 2015). Some gifted students who are underachievers not only have problems with motivation but also with their social status. Common characteristics of underachieving gifted students are being a perfectionist, being over active or being socially isolated from peers (Cooper, 2012). Male students often show more signs of underachievement than female students. This onset of underachievement …