The U.S. Department of Education has given a $1.6 million grant to the University of South Florida’s college of education to research how to identify English-language learners and students from low socioeconomic levels who are gifted, according to the Tampa Tribune. The grant will fund a program called Recognizing Extraordinary Accomplishments of Children.
Elizabeth Shaunessy, an associate professor for gifted education at the university, plans to research how a nonverbal test, which uses picture patterns to assess intelligence, might increase the participation of ELLs and students from low-income families in gifted programs, the article says.
I feature this grant because it’s one of the few efforts I’ve heard about in a decade of writing about ELLs that recognizes how such students can be evaluated for giftedness.