Newly Funded Jacob Javits Grant
We are happy to announce that the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary, in collaboration with the Center for Talent Development (CTD) at Northwestern University and the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), has been funded by the Jacob K. Javits Federal Grant Program. The grant proposal is one targeting state departments of educations. The partnership among the ODE, CTD and CFGE has been entitled the Online Curriculum Consortium for Accelerating Middle School (Project OCCAMS). Project OCCAMS will develop, provide, and evaluate new online courses designed to address the learning needs of gifted students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. More specifically, according to the grant proposal Project OCCAMS will attempt to “increase the identification of underrepresented students by raising academic achievement and expanding screening opportunities, to increase access to advanced coursework for disadvantaged students who are identified as gifted but are not currently receiving gifted services, and the creation of a sustainable online multi-district infrastructure to enhance diverse schools’ capacity to identify and serve all gifted learners.”
In Ohio, 48.5% of students are economically disadvantaged, and 15.4% of all students have been identified as gifted. However, only 3.3% of Ohio students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are identified as gifted. Project OCCAMS will work with students from five Ohio school districts: Akron City, Columbus City, Kent City, Sandusky City, and Westerville City.
There are several goals of Project OCCAMS. The first goal for the curriculum experts, online instructional experts, and educational experts from Ohio is to develop and deliver accelerated online courses in ELA that are based on successful William & Mary curriculum units. They will be “supplemented with unique enrichment modules and support systems designed to address barriers to success in online learning for economically disadvantaged students.”
The second goal is to increase the “identification of gifted students from underrepresented populations by increasing opportunities for screening and providing access to curricula shown to increase achievement.” The third goal is to “increase accelerated course placement of economically disadvantaged students upon entry into high school, thereby expanding future opportunities to enroll in Advanced Placement and dual enrollment courses for college credit.” The fourth goal attempts to “improve the ratings of diverse schools on Ohio’s Gifted Education Performance Indicator in the state’s school district accountability system.”
In the fifth goal, Project OCCAMS will attempt to “create a sustainable online infrastructure that will enhance school districts’ capacity to serve diverse gifted students, including a leadership cadre of gifted coordinators skilled in implementing the online curriculum with diverse students.” The final goal is to “conduct research to discern if the interventions are efficacious and can be replicated with future expansion of the consortium.” Accomplishing these goals will inform us in important ways about providing rigorous curriculum to high ability students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Collaborating with our good friends at Northwestern University’s Midwest Talent Search and our new friends at the Ohio Department of Education is a dream come true. A great deal of appreciation goes out to Dr. Eric Calvert for making this happen. He was instrumental in building this coalition to work on behalf of high-ability students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
