Dena Levitz, The Examiner
2008-01-22 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is planning to add a gifted-and-talented program to the system, and wants to locate the classes in areas of the city where poverty and low-performing schools prevail.

The chancellor told members of the Women’s Bar Association late last week she was outraged to learn upon arriving in the nation’s capital seven months ago that D.C. has lacked so-called gifted programs for years.

“It speaks volumes about our expectations,” Rhee said.

Parents, particularly in Ward 3 in upper Northwest D.C., have pushed for their schools to host offerings for gifted and talented students, because those programs tend to feature higher test scores and lower dropout rates.

Yet Rhee said she preferred starting in wards 5, 7 and 8, areas with the “biggest gap between how students are doing and how they should be doing.”

In many cases, the tactic would draw Ward 3 students across the city to Southeast D.C.

“It’s a dynamic that’s happened in reverse for years,” she said, adding that the more awareness grows about the great distances families often travel for high-quality schooling, “the more movement we’ll be able to create to lift this city up.”

A dramatic achievement gap between black and white D.C. students is one of the greatest challenges on the horizon, in Rhee’s eyes.

In some parts of the city, white students outscore black students by 70 percent.

According to Mary Levy, of the Washington Lawyers Committee’s education reform project, D.C. formerly had a small office for gifted-and-talented programs, but it disappeared in the mid-1990s when the school system faced severe budget cuts.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com