Audit: Georgia schools took money for gifted services they didn’t provide

“While most Gifted-eligible students are receiving Gifted services, some students are enrolled in schools that do not appear to offer any Gifted classes,” the review added.

Schools may have been “overpaid” as much as $9.7 million for classes that lacked a teacher with the kind of training that bestows a gifted “endorsement,” the review said.

That wasn’t the only problem.

Nearly 4,000 students for whom school districts received extra money to provide gifted services weren’t listed as eligible, the review said.

In all, schools may have been allocated at least $13 million that they should not have, the review found.

The Georgia Department of Education distributes federal and state funding to school districts, and is required to hold them accountable.

The agency said in the 41-page review it was undertaking what it described as a “Data Modernization Initiative” to enhance oversight. It also objected to some of the findings and recommendations. One argument: The information collected by auditors was affected by the pandemic.

The auditors responded that they collected data back to 2017 and found an abiding trend.

The estimated overpayments were a fraction of the state budget. In fiscal year 2022, Georgia allocated nearly $10 billion for K-12 schools, with $726.5 million of that going to gifted education.

Too many students, too few teachers

Ineligible students and teachers weren’t the only problems noted. Auditors found too few gifted teachers for the number of students: More than 3 in 4 gifted classes exceeded the maximum 12 students per teacher. The average ratio was nearly double that limit.

While not in compliance with law like the other two findings, that last one didn’t technically matter.

The General Assembly a decade ago allowed school districts to become either “charter” districts or “waiver” districts. Nearly all of the state’s 180 school districts chose one of those designations. Both types get “flexibility” to waive a variety of legal requirements, such as the minimum number of school days or the maximum number of students per teacher, including for gifted classes.

“Basically you have handed a veto pen to the school board,” said Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators.

Exceeding class size maximums makes it more difficult for teachers to focus on each student’s needs, she said. Schools can also waive teacher credentialing requirements, she added.

At one charter district she wouldn’t identify, except to say it’s not in metro Atlanta, Morgan said she talked with new employees at a teacher orientation who were still in college. They’d been hired as interns to lead classes though they didn’t have four-year degrees.

Finding gifted students

Another concern of the auditors: Of nine Southeastern states reviewed by the auditors, six require “universal” screening of students for their gifted programs while three do not, with Georgia in that latter group. The screening involves tests for academic achievement, creativity, intelligence and motivation. The state also has a persistent underrepresentation of Black students in gifted classrooms, something universal screening might address by identifying students “who might otherwise be missed.”

Universal screening “is considered one of the most important tools in ensuring every student — particularly those in underrepresented groups — receives consideration for gifted services,” the auditors wrote.

Despite the lack of an enforced mandate, 93% of systems surveyed by auditors — 114 of 123 respondents out of 180 school districts — said they were voluntarily screening all students. Two out of 3 of them were doing so annually in first through eighth grades.

In response to auditors’ concerns, Georgia’s Education Department told the agency that it would implement universal screening if lawmakers required it — and paid for it.

A department spokeswoman later told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the agency would follow the audit recommendations “within the scope of state law and considering the context of the pandemic’s impact on education.”

If you want to talk with a journalist about the gifted program at your school, send us an email at education@ajc.com. Please summarize what you’ve observed and share your phone number so that a reporter might call you.

Universal screening

Universal screening can be expensive, said Denis Dumas, a testing expert. To be identified as gifted, students take a battery of tests, including one for creativity. That one typically involves writing and is scored by human readers, so it’s labor-intensive.

Using a federal grant, he helped design a creativity test that is graded by artificial intelligence. The MOTES test (motes.unt.edu) is free for school districts, but none are using it yet.

Dumas, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Georgia, said such universal screening would reduce the inequity in gifted programs.

White and Asian students are identified as gifted in Georgia in greater proportion to their number enrolled than other groups, the auditors noted. Also, they wrote, household income correlates with results on multiple-choice achievement tests, which are among the tests used to identify gifted students.

Experts say multiple-choice achievement tests handicap students in minority groups that, on average, have lower household income.

Tests for creativity can address that when looking for gifted kids, Dumas said.