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Denton ISD wants to boost diversity in honors programs by identifying talent and potential early

Students gather in a collaboration space at the new Newton Rayzor Elementary School campus.
Courtesy photo
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Denton ISD
Students gather in a collaboration space at the new Newton Rayzor Elementary School campus.

Despite rising numbers of Hispanic, Black and economically disadvantaged students across Denton ISD, district leaders say those students aren’t well enough represented in high school honors courses.

Leaders said that one solution to getting more of those students in advanced academics is paying attention to potential among elementary schoolers in the district.

Landon Turrubiarte, principal of Blanton Elementary School, was part of the team that reviewed advanced academics for the district’s campus improvement plans. The improvement plans are massive, creating more than 1,000 pages of documentation on priorities given to the school board, and Turrubiarte said they noticed that demographic shifts weren’t reflected in honors classes.

“What we started to look at was why,” Turrubiarte said. “And a big part of the conversation was that we’re looking at kids who are already ready. They’re coming into those classes completely prepared.”

In the United States, critics say, advanced academics favor white and Asian students. However, recent data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights shows that, in Texas, Hispanic students are ahead of all other racial groups in advanced academic program enrollment — including International Baccalaureate, gifted and talented, and advanced placement. Nationally, white students outnumber other racial groups in advanced academic enrollment.

Turrubiarte used his campus as an example of the district’s approach to changing the demographics in advanced academics. The school’s guiding coalition, a group of stakeholders that leads change and focuses on outcomes on campuses, started looking for students with potential. They had two tasks: to focus on students who could excel in a rigorous program, and to get families on board to try it.

“That took a lot of work to reach out to parents and have conversations because, I think, a lot of parents ... didn’t know what the classes looked like,” he said.

Denton ISD has targeted, age-specific advanced academic programs. Kindergarteners through eighth graders can qualify for EXPO, which refers to exceptional potential. Middle School EXPO students study advanced academics in their language arts programs. Elementary schoolers get advanced academics in multiple content areas.

“Students can be referred for evaluation into the EXPO program by parents, teachers, campus-based personnel, or even themselves,” said Reece Waddell, a DISD spokesperson.

All campuses in Denton ISD offer the EXPO program.

In high school, high-achieving students get their advanced academics on a more individual plan, according to their academic and extracurricular interests.

As a part of the campus improvement plan at Blanton, Turrubiarte said, teachers and administrators have paid more attention to Hispanic, Black and economically disadvantaged students who could meet the challenge of EXPO academics.

“There has been some struggle on that,” he said. “As a teacher, if I’m used to having kids that are already ready, they’re coming in completely prepared, it’s almost like you roll the balls out and let them go. Now there is a little bit more struggle involved. And that’s part of the learning process. Our staff is having to adjust to that mindset. We’re making progress on that.”

Denton ISD Superintendent Susannah O’Bara said as the elementary schools nominate more students and lobby more families to invest in advanced programs, the district is looking years ahead to the staffing needed to continue serving high-achieving students.

“That’s relevant as we talk about our budget conversations and preparing for next year,” O’Bara said. “Because this impacts the master schedule for next year both for McMath [Middle] and for Denton High — or all our high schools.”

Brett Moore, the principal at McMath Middle School, said taking more students out of general education programming and into advanced academics means moving teachers around, as well. That gets complicated because the district has frozen full-time teaching programs due to a budget deficit. More students in gifted and talented programs means more teachers need to be trained to teach advanced curriculum, Moore said.

“Honestly, we need to create the problem [that] our kids are performing so highly that we’re casting a broader net,” Moore said. “That we’re putting more pressure that our kids are performing so highly that our course schedule has to be adjusted, and [full-time teachers] need to be allotted because the kids are being pushed at a higher level.”

Turrubiarte said he and Moore taught sixth grade math at Strickland Middle School. When students came in exceeding the sixth grade math curriculum, they had to discuss both a curriculum to challenge those students as well as the instructional framework needed to get kids who weren’t performing on grade level that they needed to be.

Now that Turrubiarte is teaching elementary school, he said, it’s a challenge to “wrap my arms around what it means for a 3-year-old who’s in pre-k on my campus right now to be college, career or military ready.”

For more of them, he said, it means pushing them to strive for advanced academics and push through the struggle to get on the level the coursework demands.

“Think about all we can do with all this time that we have,” he said. “The amount of instruction. The amount of family engagement pouring into them ... I had a really fun conversation with a grandparent in September ... this grandfather had a student in the elementary level and one in middle school and one in high school. And we were talking about all the opportunities that he sees kids have now that he didn’t have.”

O’Bara said schools sometimes hear from parents who are frustrated with new techniques, methods and tools used in elementary school courses. But she tells parents their students are adding tools to their toolkit.

“You’ll hear a lot of frustration from parents about this ‘new math,’” she said. “Understanding the different ways you get to that answer, that’s where the struggle is. That’s where the learning is. Learning happens in the struggle. Identifying kids that don’t necessarily show up for AP ready? Put them in the AP class. Put them in the honors class. And let them experience the struggle — because the struggle is where the learning happens.”