The Need to Attend to the Twice-Exceptional-The Need for Rockaway College

The case studies of Charlie, David and Jonathan, told last post, form a portrait of the existence of the Twice-Exceptional and of the complete failure of our current schooling to meet their needs.  Rockaway College would provide a growth medium for the full spectrum of Gifted and Talented but would focus its learning programs on direct service to the Twice-Exceptional providing these children an altered schooling structure making it impossible for the problems of conventional schooling to take root and giving those hurt by their prior schooling a place to heal.

Demonstrating a need to serve the Twice-Exceptional and for Rockaway College centers in two areas:  1) complete absence of identification against there being a sizable number of 2e children creating a huge gap in education for this population,  and 2) inappropriate intervention strategies failing the needs of 2e children.

1) There is a total absence of identification of this population against there being a sizable number of 2e children creating a huge gap in education for this population.  In the State of New York a child can be found to be disabled or gifted/talented not both:  Neither Article 89, Title 6, of New York State Education Law, governing Special Education, or Article 90, Title 6, of New York State Education Law, governing Gifted and Talented Education, specify the presence of the Twice-Exceptional.  Thus, without the necessity of local school districts to identify, local school authorities have excluded Twice-Exceptional children in reporting their student populations, making prevalence unknown throughout the State, and in New York City as well. (Bills S.1273 and A5507, currently in respective Education Committees of the State Legislature are meant to remedy this.) 

Yet, as the Colorado Department of Education points out in its Introductory Resource Book, “Twice-Exceptional Students:  Gifted Students with Disabilities”, “…2-5 percent of the gifted population will have disabilities and 2-5 percent of students with disabilities will be gifted.” (p. 15).  Thus, those looking for prevalence in New York City, especially, must extrapolate based on current numbers of gifted and of disabled served by City Public Schools for the public schools hold hard numbers, the private school's do not.  Admittedly this method will undercount prevalence, but presently it is the only way to have any useful data.

New York City defines giftedness as those scoring within the top 10^th percentile on admissions tests, which de facto excludes children with disabilities who do poorly on these assessments; thus, regardless of the number of “gifted” served in the City schools, calculation of probable 2e population from the gifted population is impossible.

But, as the National Education Association points out in their manual, “The Twice Exceptional Dilemma” (2006), disabilities cover gifts.  Thus, it is possible to extrapolate a reasonable number of Twice-Exceptional from the number of students the City has declared as disabled.  According to the Public Advocate, the City is educating 210,000 disabled youngsters. (Public Advocate DeBlasio and ARISE Coalition Kick Off ‘Students with Disabilities Month’, April 3, 2011)  Therefore, taking two to five percent of 210,000 gives an estimate of a minimum pool of 4,200 to 10, 500 youngsters.  Now, Micaela Bracamonte, Director and Founder of the only school in New York City dedicated to educating the Twice-Exceptional, calculates a figure of 50,000 for New York City (“Twice-Exceptional Students:  Who Are They and What Do They Need”, p. 4) .  Further, according to Marlo Payne Thurman, “My colleagues and I agree that gifted children with disabilities occur in much more…of the gifted population, as commonly believed in the past.  In fact, twice-exceptionality may be closer to the norm than the exception in gifted populations.” (Marlo Payne Thurman, “Too Tired!  Energy and Wellness in 2e Children”, 2e Newsletter, Issue 38, January/February 2010, p. 16.)

Regardless of the numbers chosen, they represent a rather sizable population of New York City youngsters in need of a learning environment dedicated to their unique needs.  And at this point, as mentioned, there is only one school, The Lang School, which is so dedicated, leaving a huge gap to be filled.

2) Inappropriate intervention strategies fail the needs of 2e children:  Educators, parents, and students are asked to choose between services to address one exceptionality or the other, according to the NEA’s manual.  Acceleration and Enrichment are the gifted services.  The Continuum of Services is the disability services.  Neither intervention strategy works to fulfill the needs of the Twice-Exceptional, as concentration on the gifts ignores the disabilities, and the concentration on the disabilities ignores the gifts.

Acceleration within current schooling is of state learning standard content:  it is more of the same just faster.   This cannot account for the pronounced asymmetrical growth typical of the Twice-Exceptional, not to mention the denial of other characteristics such as auditory and/or visual processing problems which may cause them to respond slowly, to work slowly, and to appear to think slowly, or motor difficulties exhibited by clumsiness, poor handwriting, or problems completing paper-and-pencil tasks, or the apparent lack of organizational and study skills-often appearing to be extremely “messy”, among others.  Enrichment is the imposition on the gifted of what is thought by teachers and other school officials to be of interest which cannot account for the high degree of self-direction possessed by the Twice-Exceptional, not to mention the denial of other characteristics such as a wide range of interests unrelated to enrichment topics, or a specific talent or consuming interest area for which they have an exceptional memory and knowledge, or advanced ideas and opinions which they are uninhibited in expressing, among others.

However, most problematic for the Twice-Exceptional is the disability intervention, the Continuum of Services.  It completely excludes the gifted element in favor of remediation of deficit.  Remediation applies various strategies to enhance cognitive weakness so a deficit area works roughly equal to the same cognitive area in non-disabled peers. Remediation, then, attempts to reverse and repair a child’s neurological or physical functioning for the purposes of maintaining students in the general education setting and of supporting the expected achievement of grade level learning standards.  Indeed, as Garth Harries put it:  “For…students with disabilities, the objective of special education is to enable them to learn the same content at the same pace as their non-disabled peers.” (Memorandum Regarding Recommendations to Improve Services to Students with Disabilities, July 2, 2009, pp. 7-8)

The results of the Continuum of Services/Remediation approach for regular special needs are summed up:

• Graduation statistics for the class of 2009 show that only 1 in 4 [25% of] students with disabilities graduated from high school in 4 years.

• Data just released by New York State education officials calculates that just under 17%

of students with disabilities in New York State graduate high school college and career

ready.

 (Out of School and Unprepared, Arise Coalition, February 2011, p. 2)

Clearly, since the regular special needs are being failed by current disability education in New York City, it is not much of a logical extension to say the Twice-Exceptional are as well.  And this failure of the system is compounded for the Twice-Exceptional in special education by the unrecognized and unserved gifted component.

Therefore, regardless of the current intervention, for giftedness or for disability, the needs of the Twice-Exceptional are never met.