The Rio Grande Valley is a place replete with intelligent, talented children who are well capable of becoming champions and leaders and making a positive impact on the world and their communities. Nonetheless, to achieve success, children need the right fostering and education to fulfill their potential.
As part of a nationwide commitment to recognize and serve exceptionally capable children, ensuring that no promise is left unrealized, Brownsville ISD’s Gifted and Talented (GT) program strives to identify children with exceptional abilities in creative, intellectual, or artistic fields. GT students are then provided with a tailored educational experience meant to challenge them beyond the general understanding of the classroom.
“We don’t have a separate curriculum for GT students. All students are expected to use the TEA (Texas Education Agency) curriculum using the district’s adopted resources. What the GT program does though is it ensures that those students get any needed support and supplements in the classroom,” said Dr. Roni Louise Rentfro, District Director of School Improvement/Assessment, Research, Evaluation, and Advanced Academic Programs.
“We expect teachers to differentiate content, process, product and/or the learning environment. In a classroom that has a group of identified students or even if they only have one identified student, the teacher plans lessons that will challenge that student at their level and ability. For example, a student may have a choice about the type of product they’re going to present to the class about what they’ve learned or it could be that the teacher has grouped the identified students together because they might learn at a different pace when working together.”
The history of the GT program at Brownsville ISD (BISD) traces back to the early 1980s when it was applied at a few elementary schools and eventually expanded to middle schools and high schools in the subsequent years. By 1994, all BISD campuses provided GT services. Dr. Rentfro herself was one of the initial GT educators for middle school students in 1988.
The state mandates school districts in Texas to implement GT programs. Still, each district is allowed flexibility in interpreting state requirements to account for the differences across districts. GT students can be identified for multiple disciplines at once, including academics (all content or specific content areas), fine arts, or leadership.
Students at BISD are evaluated for GT services through nominations and testing. All kindergarten students are examined for placement into the GT program, but students can be nominated and tested until the end of the junior year. Nominations can be from parents, teachers, counselors, or administrators, and testing evaluates both academic and creative performance.
Working in collaboration with Advanced Academic Programs to promote student success and cultivate district excellence, the Assessment, Research, and Evaluation (A.R.E.) department works to coordinate the implementation of state and district assessments at BISD and conduct statistical analyses to evaluate and improve the schools’ performances.
“We don’t actually do the testing, but we’re the ones who do the training, we’re the ones who monitor, now that it’s online that the assessments are functioning, and we’re the intermediary between campuses and the state during testing,” said Rentfro.
The department is also responsible for ensuring that testing accommodations for students with special needs are included, ensuring equitable testing environments.
“Our assessment department, on a daily basis, is working with our different assessment systems. They provide support for example in training our campus teachers and staff on how to access different reports, analyze different reports and create assessments,” said Rentfro.
In combination, the GT program and the A.R.E department are powerful tools that BISD counts on to provide a high-quality education for the students of the region. Empowering them with the transformative opportunity of education.
Dr. Rentfro states, though, that much of GT student success is based on identification and parent or adult action — especially for GT students who need support services:
“If you think a student would benefit from being identified for gifted and talented services, go ahead and put in a nomination for the student whether it’s at our district or somewhere else in the region where their students are attending. Some of these students will not be as successful as they could be if we’re not making sure that they have the opportunities and supports that identification provides.”
