Students' Complicated Gifts

Schools Struggle With Exceptional Learning-Disabled

By Nurith C. Aizenman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, June 23, 2002; Page A01

By age 5, Max deArriz could do double-digit subtraction in his head. Yet he was incapable of recognizing the number 2.

By age 6, Owen Budd's preferred bedtime story was a technical manual on model railroad building. Yet he could barely write the letters in the word "train."

And just shy of her 10th birthday, Julia Langer can describe the human brain she recently dissected with the precision of a biology teacher. Yet she has only learned to read in the past three months.

Such are the paradoxes of being simultaneously gifted and learning disabled -- a condition shared by hundreds, and possibly thousands, of students across the Washington region.

Researchers have dubbed these children "twice exceptional." But they could also be called twice challenged: Their precocious verbal skills and astonishing mental acuity can mask severe learning problems such as dyslexia, attention-deficit disorder and poor fine motor skills, even as their dismal academic performance conceals the full extent of their genius.

Some are placed in gifted programs where their low grades are chalked up to laziness or bad attitude. Others languish in special education classes where they are literally bored to tears by drill-and-kill math exercises and "See Spot Run"-style reading primers. Then there are those whose gifts and disabilities are so evenly balanced that they are presumed to be average and left to fend for themselves in mainstream classes. Whatever the arrangement, said national expert Susan Baum, the result is often the same: low self-esteem, depression and even suicidal tendencies.

Parents are often mystified at the transformation. "I used to say, 'Why is a child who has never been mentally or physically abused walking around so depressed all the time?' " recalled Karen Snyder of Gaithersburg, as she recounted how her normally exuberant son lost his zest and energy after starting kindergarten.

Now, armed with an expanding body of research, more and more families are demanding that school systems fully meet their twice-exceptional children's needs. And at a time when President Bush has instructed the education world to "leave no child behind," school officials are slowly beginning to listen.

In Fairfax County, consultants such as Andrew S. Mahoney are doing brisk business persuading schools to provide their clients with remedial support and allow such aids as calculators and instant spell-checkers in gifted classes.

In Anne Arundel and Howard counties, parent groups recently persuaded district officials to bring in Baum, who has written numerous books and papers on identifying and teaching twice-exceptional children, to lecture administrators and teachers on her findings.

Prince George's County has gone further, holding special support classes at least twice a week at its gifted magnet and regular schools for about 350 twice-exceptional children..

Most sweeping, however, is a program that began in Montgomery County as a pilot project 15 years ago. At the urging of parents, the program has blossomed into a nationally recognized system including six full-day elementary school classes designed exclusively for about 65 twice-exceptional children, and partial-day classes for up to 140 middle and high school students. An additional 1,800 students identified by the county as both gifted and learning disabled are in regular gifted programs and receive support services within their classes or pullout instruction in selected subjects.

To educate these students, Montgomery follows a golden rule developed by researchers from more than two decades of observation. As Baum put it, "You teach to the gift rather than to the disability."

On a recent morning in the program's class for second- and third-graders at Thurgood Marshall Elementary in Gaithersburg, for instance, teacher Susan Kowalski asked her students to take turns rolling four dice. Then they were told to combine and multiply the numbers that came up to see who could get the highest result.

There was a mad scramble for pencils and paper, followed by sudden silence as the students hunched over in concentration. As she painstakingly wrote out her subtotals, Julia Langer of North Potomac, who is dyslexic, flipped the order of two digits. But she caught the error after double-checking her result on a calculator. "Oh, goody gumdrops! I got the highest number!" she shrieked.

Absorbed in the challenge of the game, Julia and her classmates seemed oblivious to the fact that they were essentially doing a math drill. And that was precisely the point, Kowalski explained: "These kids learn a lot more by playing games and having fun."

Next door, five boys in Larry March's fourth- and fifth-grade class sat around a tape recorder, listening intently to the fantasy novel "The Golden Compass." Every once in a while, they chuckled at the narrator's use of a cockney accent or nodded knowingly at the twists of what seemed a hopelessly complicated plot.

Then they typed up questions about the story for each other on laptop computers. "Why did they thout with sords?" wrote 10-year-old Warren Beecroft, before his spell-checker prompted him to change "thout" to "fight" and "sords" to "swords."

His errors underscored how difficult it would have been for Warren, who is dyslexic and dysgraphic -- meaning he has difficulty writing by hand -- to study such an advanced book without access to technology to help him read and write. But here again the program's aim is to nurture students' gifts rather than hold them back until they complete remedial work.

"Otherwise, you risk preventing these incredibly gifted kids from reaching their full potential, and that is a tremendous loss not just to the kids but to society," said Richard Weinfeld, head of Montgomery's program.

That is not to say that the students' disabilities are not addressed. Warren, who like others in the class also has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and difficulties with short-term memory, was taught to write down his assignments and check them off so he wouldn't forget about them. He also came to school two hours early all year so March could teach him techniques to recognize words more quickly.

Scientists have only limited understanding of what goes on in the brains of people who are learning disabled, let alone those who are simultaneously gifted. Certain methods, though, appear to help children for whom traditional approaches simply do not work.

For instance, if Warren tries to sound out a long, unfamiliar word, he forgets each syllable the moment he moves on to the next. But if he taps his finger as he reads the syllable, a different part of his memory appears to be activated and he is able to retain it.

Montgomery's multilayered approach is a welcome contrast to the reception Warren received when he started kindergarten at an international school overseas, said his mother, Anne Beecroft. Until then, she said, Warren had been a friendly, articulate child who was fascinated by animals. Yet teachers at his rigorous school in Saudi Arabia -- where Warren's father was stationed with the U.S. State Department -- soon complained that he was unable to memorize poems and took longer than normal to write simple words.

"They said, 'There's something wrong with your child,' " she recalled. Then she took Warren to a doctor, who told her that he was perfectly fine and that "the school is overreacting." No one suggested that her son might be both gifted and learning disabled.

Such misdiagnoses are just as common in the United States, experts said. Although researchers have recognized for at least three decades that people can be simultaneously gifted and learning disabled, the news still has not filtered to most school districts and teachers. As a result, noted Thomas Payne, director of Howard County's gifted program, "a teacher may not even think in her wildest dreams that this child who is brilliant verbally but unable to do simple writing assignments should be referred to a gifted class."

Partly for this reason, there are no reliable estimates as to what portion of the population is twice exceptional. Most Washington area school districts do not keep track of such students. And in Montgomery County, where 2,000, or 1.5 percent of students, are in that category, Weinfeld estimates 500 others may be falling through the cracks.

Even after Warren's parents moved to Montgomery and enrolled him in first grade at Rachel Carson Elementary School in Gaithersburg, teachers there did not think to refer him to the twice-exceptional program. It wasn't until late in the year, when Beecroft brought her son -- by then clinically depressed and failing school -- to an outside consultant, that she learned of March's class.

The program has carried a price. When Warren's father realized that the family would need to remain in the United States for several years to get his son the help he needed, Beecroft said, "he was devastated. . . . Being a Foreign Service officer was just perfect for him."

Still the family is delighted that, in the three years since Warren started the Montgomery program, he has bloomed into an accomplished student and a confident, contented one.

"In this room, everybody has a disability, and that's not even up for discussion," March said. "What we focus on is that you have a gift that we don't know enough about."

March's students still may face tough times: Classes exclusively for twice-exceptional class are often not available after fifth grade. Like a number of children, Max deArriz, now 13, graduated from the elementary program with flying colors two years ago, only to complain that the teachers and aides at Montgomery Village Middle School in Gaithersburg routinely failed to provide the full support he had been promised in his gifted classes

Max's morale plummeted. And this year, soon after he said he could slit his wrists with one of the scalpels in biology class, his mother, Laura Klingler, decided to teach him at home.

"I don't think my son really wanted to commit suicide," she said. "But I really think it was a cry for help." Now, he is thriving once more.

Despite the program's limitations, parents in Fairfax, Howard, Anne Arundel and elsewhere look at Montgomery with envy. Weinfeld said he has received numerous inquiries from parents considering moving to the county because they are dissatisfied with the services their children receive.

Karen Snyder, whose son Josh has just completed fifth grade in Montgomery, hopes such moves will force school districts to do more for twice-exceptional children. "All over the country, these kids are suffering," she said. "And as a nation, we are still ignoring them."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company