Initial Hopkins Program Meeting

- CTY shares with its parent organization, the Johns Hopkins University, a three-part mission of teaching, research, and service. More specifically, CTY: Seeks students of the highest academic ability through its talent search and offers them challenging educational opportunities that develop the intellect, encourage achievement, and nurture social development.
Conducts research and evaluation studies that advance knowledge about gifted education; develops best practices in educating highly able children; and disseminates its findings to parents, the education community, and policymakers.
Supports educators in their efforts to meet the needs of highly able students, assists parents in advocating for their gifted children, and participates actively in community service.

- This seems to be an outsourcing model where the district pays a fee to have it’s students take on line courses in advanced subject matters. We need to examine whether we have the expertise within district to administer such courses and if not, why not.

- It appears as if there are approximately 50 students in the district identified as Gifted and Talented but it not quite clear what is the criteria for such a designation. IQ tests are not given in the district and standardized test scores are not a reliable measure of IQ. Current students take a test administered by John Hopkins. We will need to find out some additional psychometric properties of this measure. Of the students identified, 45 seem to be identified for mathematics and 5 for verbal. None for science.

- There as additional discussion about the possibility of introducing a series of courses at Conners school. These would possibly include: economics, politics, music (violin) and chineese. There’s been varying degrees of success with these courses and we’ll need to examine this more closely. It was noted that these classes would be available for all students at Conners and not just the Gifted and Talented.

- There was discussion about a Preparing for College course which would help students and parents think about college.

- There was some discussion about a program with the NJ Symp. Centered around music for the students.

- There appears to be little coordination with the IB program to date. IB identifies themselves as being NOT exclusively for Gifted and Talented students. While not identical there seems to be at least some overlap of public perception with these two programs. If not for the same students than certainly in advocates for a more rigorous curriculum for the majority of Hoboken students.