Gifted Programs: IUSD's APAAS (Part 4)

This week in our in-depth look at the Irvine Unified School District's (IUSD's) Alternative Program for Academically Accelerated Students (APAAS) we'll address the effectiveness of this controversial program.

Parents seeking to enroll their children in APAAS generally do so for one (or more) of three reasons. First, they believe that their students will receive the most rigorous and challenging education offered by the IUSD—one of the top-ranked school districts in California. Second, they feel that this training, apart from its specific pedagogic content, will teach their children to be serious students—hard working, organized, and, perhaps most important, high achieving. Finally, they think that by segregating their children from students in the regular program—APAAS students are grouped together for three years, separate from the other classes other than in subjects like physical education and music—they will engineer an appropriately diligent and studious peer group for them. This peer group, at least in theory, will further foster academic achievement and protect APAAS students from the typical social distractions of upper elementary, middle, and, ultimately, high school years.

Unfortunately, none of these reasons for enrolling a child in APAAS has empirical support. Let's address each one in turn. If APAAS students are, in fact, receiving the most rigorous and challenging education available in the district, we would expect to see significantly higher achievement later on. When I researched this myself two years ago, I discovered several important facts.

First, regardless of what happens during the APAAS grades of 4 through 6, APAAS students proceed to middle school, where they join the regular and Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) students in the middle school curriculum. So even if they have completed an accelerated program in elementary school, it isn't followed by anything comparable later on.

Second, there are no data indicating that APAAS students perform any better than non-APAAS students in middle school, high school, or college. The APAAS program has no empirically valid outcome data. When I inquired about this, I was told that administrators were beginning to explore the issue and had arrived at an outcome measure. What was this variable? Matriculation at any four-year college or university. Since most IUSD seniors go on to college following graduation, this measure of APAAS effectiveness does not seem useful.

Turning to the second reason parents enroll their children in APAAS—that the program will train them to be serious students—we again find no evidence supporting this belief. Yes, APAAS students have to work hard—they are overloaded with homework. And yes, they have to be organized—or, more accurately, to have organized and available parents. But these things do not teach children to be serious students—nor, as we've seen, do they turn these students into high achievers. Serious students are those who are independently motivated and actively engaged with—and excited by—the things they are learning. If anything, APAAS students, through no fault of their own, may well end up being less serious students, because any joy in learning and school has been driven out of them.

Finally, parental hopes that the APAAS peer group will ultimately influence academic achievement for the better are ill-founded. As already mentioned, APAAS students do not proceed into comparable programs in the IUSD middle and high schools; rather, they're intermixed with regular and GATE students from a wide variety of elementary, and then middle, school programs. The "boot camp" APAAS atmosphere is gone, and many former APAAS students find themselves coasting through middle school and feeling happier than they have in years. Many, too, are glad to be back in classes with old non-APAAS friends—and to be broadening their social worlds with completely new friendships after having spent three years in a classroom with the same kids.

Next week we'll take a look at parental satisfaction and who is most—and least—likely to be happy with the APAAS program.