Complaint produced school TAG ruling

John Shepherd, who filed a complaint about Sisters High School’s program for Talented and Gifted (TAG) students, is happy with the response from the Oregon Department of Education. And he is guardedly hopeful that the state’s criticism will “compel Sisters to put their program in gear.”

Superintendent Ted Thonstad received a letter from ODE officials October 31 laying out “initial findings” to the effect that the district’s TAG program was deficient. High School Principal Bob Macauley said most of the problems cited can be fairly easily remedied (The Nugget, Nov. 9, Page 5, “School must do more for talented.”)

“I’m hoping that the high school takes this as a wake-up call and an opportunity to come into compliance,” Shepherd said last week, “not: ‘We better do the paperwork shuffle here so we can still get away with doing the minimum of service.’”

Shepherd argues that while the school has a nice “pyramid of services” for TAG students on paper, it doesn’t really offer them in practice. He bases part of his judgment on the experience of one of his sons, Thomas, now a 10th grader. But he says his concern extends to the “60 to 70 TAG kids in high school” who deserve offerings geared to their higher ability levels.

The ODE letter explains that state regulations require schools to “have a written plan for (TAG) programs and services.” The regulations also say that, “The instruction provided to identified students shall address their assessed levels of learning and accelerated rates of learning.”

The state officials who investigated Shepherd’s complaint found that the school district “did not provide a written plan that included programs and services available to…students.” And they found that the district “did not address the rate and level needs of a student with an intellectual TAG identification.

“No evidence was found of procedures or policies on how individual students’ rate and level needs are determined.” The third conclusion was that “Thomas Shepherd’s rate and level needs as a TAG-identified student were not met by the assignments and enrichment options given in English 9 A/B.”

The letter gives the district a “30-day extension of time to submit any additional information or material that addresses the initial findings.”

Partly at Shepherd’s urging, the superintendent last January appointed a 12-member committee to review the district’s TAG offerings at all grade levels. The committee issued a report in May citing 11 prioritized recommendations for improvement and another 10 that were not prioritized. No. 1 on the list was: “Improve parent communications and promote two-way dialogue.”

Shepherd says he has seen little evidence of that or other recommendations making a difference. He notes that the high school’s “pyramid of services” lists such measures as cluster grouping (of TAG students within a class), curriculum compacting and differentiated instruction, “but they don’t offer it.”

He acknowledges that the high school now has three Advanced Placement classes and several “honors” classes. They are good, he says, but there aren’t enough, in enough subjects, to serve the needs of the school’s advanced students.

“I’ll keep monitoring it,” Shepherd said, “but to be honest with you I’m not real hopeful at this point. I’m afraid they’ll try to do a minimalist paper shuffle and hope that satisfies the ODE. And if they do, that’s not going to cut it.”