Blending successes : The Bentonville School District seeks seamless transitions and clearer policies for its TREC Center, Advanced Placement and other Gifted and Talented programs.

— It's become clear the Bentonville School District's decision to start the TREC Center five years ago was a good one.

"This is one of the innovations we've done in the last few years that gets a lot of acclaim," Superintendent Gary Compton said at a meeting of the district's Policy Committee on Tuesday.

But it's equally clear there are opportunities for the center to shine even brighter. And, in addition to creating better communication between the district and parents, one such opportunity is to create more of a seamless transition between the TREC, Advanced Placement andother such programs along the student path.

TREC, an acronym for Think Research Explore Create, was created as a way of identifying and catering to those the district terms as "potentially gifted and talented" students. Today, TREC serves 235 identified second- through fifth-graders throughout the district. Every Tuesday through Friday, groups of TREC students from each of those grade levels are bused to the temporary modulars at Lincoln Junior High School for programming designed to challenge and push them beyond the established district and state-required curriculum.

Prior to TREC, the Pre-Advanced Placement and Advanced Placement programs, which begin at the sixth-grade level, were the earliest such programs available to qualifying students in the district. With TREC, those students are being catered to four years earlier, but five years into the program's existence, the district's policy committee sees an opportunity to better all Gifted and Talented programs by creating moreof a seamless transition from one to the other.

"It's been tremendously successful, but now we're trying to get to where there's not that disjointedness," explained Jean Womack, TREC Center coordinator.

No decisions were made Tuesday, but the district will likely have an improved TREC Center parent handbook ready for review within the next 30 days, according to Compton. The focus will be on creating more specific and clear guidelines and expectations.

"How the identification process works and what it takes to get into the program has to be crystal clear," said Countess Hodges, executive director of elementary education for the district.

In addition, the Policy Committee discussed several areas where improved communication and understanding between the district's various Gifted and Talented programs is needed. For instance, teachers must be clear on what policies exist for makeup work, tests and other assignments missed in the mainstream classroom when a studentis bused to the TREC Center. It was suggested there also needs to be better communication between kindergarten and firstgrade teachers and TREC administration, as well as between TREC, Advanced Placement and other programs.

"We've all been doing well on our own, but we have to become one, rather than a number of independently operating programs," Womack said.

Compton believes creating a more seamless transition from program to program could significantly boost the number of district high-schoolers who go on to become National Merit finalists and semifinalists. But, more importantly, he sees it creating opportunity, in general, for more students.

News, Pages 7 on 09/23/2009

Upcoming Events