Local Level IV Services

Background

The GT programs office provides a continuum of gifted services for students beginning in kindergarten.  The highest level of service is a GT center program.  Currently FCPS has 23 GT centers at the elementary level and eligible students are bussed to the GT centers from surrounding schools.  Schools that offer Local Level IV services provide an important option for advanced learners who need the challenge of a GT center curriculum and do not want to leave their local school.  They also provide another avenue of access for gifted services to students who may need to practice and strengthen their basic skills but have the capacity to think, reason, and problem solve on very high levels. 

During the 2003-2004 school year, the principal of Beech Tree offered GT center eligible students the option of remaining at Beech Tree and receiving the differentiated curriculum for gifted and talented center students.  Eight center-identified students and twelve school-based identified students made up the first class.  This third and fourth grade multiage class consisted of twenty students and was taught by a teacher trained in working with advanced learners.  The success of this first site-based model led other principals to request permission to implement a similar model in succeeding years. 

Since then, additional schools have been approved and currently twenty-seven elementary schools offer this option. These include:  Annandale Terrace, Braddock, Cameron, Columbia, Spring Hill, Timber Lane, Wolftrap, Centreville, Cherry Run, Flint Hill, Floris, Glen Forest, Great Falls, McNair, Oak View, Powell, Camelot, Chesterbrook, Forestville, Little Run, Wakefield Forest, Clermont, Fairhill, Lees Corner, Washington Mill, and Westlawn.

The decision to implement this model is based on careful planning. Principals who are interested follow these steps:

• Create a plan for implementation.
• Secure approval of the plan from the assistant superintendent for the cluster.
• Share plan with the Instructional Services Department.
• Ensure community support through a parent survey.

Shannon Paschall, a teacher of the school-based GT center at Beech Tree recently summed up the benefits of this program by reflecting on her own experience: I expanded the existing GT curriculum to make it more accessible to students from different backgrounds; the goal was to use cultural differences to enrich and enhance while taking into account possible cultural and linguistic barriers. I accomplished this by using broad concepts such as "change" or "systems" to offer a framework that all students could access. By collaborating with administrators in the GT office and my school, I made sure that these children adjusted to the rigorous environment of a GT center class not by lowering expectations, but by making the material accessible to a wide variety of learning styles and cultural backgrounds.

School-based GT centers are one of many ways that schools strengthen their programs to provide gifted services to a much broader range of advanced learners. They are not an attempt to close existing GT centers; but an effort to expand the GT center opportunity to more students.

Carol V. Horn, Ed.D.
Coordinator, Advanced Academic Programs
Fairfax County Public Schools
Carol.Horn@fcps.edu

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