SR45

WHEREAS, the No Child Left Behind Act has forced schools to focus their funding and efforts on the lowest achieving students in order to meet the mandates of Adequate Yearly Progress required by that Act; and

WHEREAS, students who are capable of high academic achievement, become unchallenged, bored, and may exhibit behavioral problems in class, and are not reaching their full potential; and

WHEREAS, many families with highly capable children have chosen to send their children to private schools because of a perceived lack of challenging curricula in public schools; and

WHEREAS, the gifted and talented programs that do exist in the public schools often serve a very small percentage of highly capable students; and

WHEREAS, many students deemed "unqualified" for current gifted and talented programs are actually capable of high achievement through "perspiration" and "aspiration"; and

WHEREAS, open-enrollment gifted and talented programs, similar to programs at Kahuku High School and Kahuku Intermediate School, show that many more students than previously contemplated are capable of meeting the demands of rigorous and challenging curricula; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-fourth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2007, that the Department of Education is requested to develop a comprehensive plan to promote opportunities for high achievement with the goal of twenty per cent of public school students enrolling in gifted and talented programs, honors classes, advanced placement courses, International Baccalaureate programs, or other similar programs designed to provide rigorous and challenging curricula; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the comprehensive plan include the following:

(1) The number of students currently enrolled in gifted and talented programs or similar programs with highly challenging academic curricula;

(2) Recommendations on ways to increase the number of enrolled students in gifted and talented programs or similar programs with highly challenging academic curricula, in order to reach the goal of twenty per cent of public school students enrolled in such programs;

(3) Recommendations on methods to include students in the gifted and talented programs who may not exhibit the traditional qualifications for acceptance into such programs, but who demonstrate a high aptitude for achievement by other performance measures;

(4) Program recommendations to provide opportunities for potentially high achieving students;

(5) Program recommendations in the areas of language arts, social studies, math, science, fine arts, performing arts, and foreign languages; and

(6) The personnel requirements and costs associated with the comprehensive plan; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Department of Education is requested to submit its plan and any findings and recommendations to this body no later than twenty days prior to the convening of the 2008 Regular Session; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this

Resolution be transmitted to the Board of Education and the Superintendent of Education.

	OFFERED BY:	_____________________________

Report Title:

Department of Education; Programs for High Achieving Students

THE SENATE	S.R. NO.	45
TWENTY-FOURTH LEGISLATURE, 2007
STATE OF HAWAII