Multicultural Assessment

Generalists and Specialists

Although most adult gifted learners have become specialists, early specialization is especially true of children who live in poverty, who have neither the resources nor, frankly, the time or the interest to cultivate general academic achievement. Dis aggregated achievement data will show each applicant's strong points, and these speak directly to his or her academic abilities. High achievement in any core area, after all, involves both motivation and ability.

The “generalist” model is the one that gifted programs in public education have been using generally. Gifted and talented programs believe that generalists have learned to succeed in all aspects of schooling and that school usually produces generalists, even if these students were specialists at the start.

In one study of two middle school magnet programs and one high school magnet, 10 percent of the children who applied for admission were specialists. Everyone with an interest in attending a magnet was told that they might qualify by making [Page 595]“commended” passing scores (a cutoff above the passing score) on the state-mandated examinations and by getting good teachers' recommendations. A number of these students made only passing marks on one or two tests, yet had very high scores on some of the other tests. These students, however, were not often selected in order to “make” the classes in the enrollment sense, but the weaker generalists were. The application of the generalist model leads to the use of composite scores on IQ and achievement tests. It not only misses many able learners in particular fields but also frequently relegates the institution to having to select the least qualified of the generalists in order to fill out their classes.

By selecting specialists as well as generalists in the prescribed way and by selecting from each disaggregated list of variables or tests, the schools could get the very best or at least the very highest scoring. The down side is that some of the specialists would probably not initially be motivated to do well in courses in which they had little interest, preferring to devote more time to activities of their own choosing, much as gifted adults do. Teachers may really have to teach to them.

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