European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 21, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Magazine Joyce Oatman a class of gifted students at Crane High school in Chicago is part of a Small but growing Effort in the United states to nurture Bright inner City students who May do poorly on standardized tests and Are often overlooked for conventional gifted programs. Quot i knew the kids were Bright and could do better a Oatman said. Quot i knew i was t getting All i could get out of these kids. But i did no to know what to  she said of her search Quot now i look for the nurturing gifted inner City students by Isabel Wilkerson new York times inside the peeling Walls of Crane High school in Chicago surrounded by housing projects and too Many gangs to count the eight members in Joyce Oatman a senior class of gifted students discuss logic and reasoning. They have risked being taunted and beaten a they have even ducked Rifle fire a to get to school. They come from poor families without fathers and neighbourhoods where few people care what calculus is. Many of them can barely scrape up the 50 cents for the student discount bus fare each morning. So the Block letters on a Wall above them spell out a fitting imperative Quot never never never  the class is part of a Small but growing Effort to identify and nurture Bright inner City students who May do poorly on standardized tests and Are often overlooked in conventional gifted programs. Their talents can be hard to discern experts say because of deficiencies in Urban education the inability of poorly educated parents to help and a Lack of exposure to mainstream culture. While students in other gifted programs take trips to Europe or seek perfect scores on the Scholastic aptitude test Oatman a class spends much of its time building self esteem so that the students will have the determination to come Back the next Day. Along with holding the Early morning class three Days a week Oatman Enrols them in cranes most rigorous courses and has taken them for the first time in their lives to the opera to museums and on retreats usually paid for out of her own pocket or with the Small amount of Money she manages to raise from local businesses and organizations. Oatman a students take advanced classes with about 150 other Crane students who Are bound for College and study advanced mathematics and writing at northeastern Illinois University in Chicago every saturday. But the Centrepiece of the program is the class in logic philosophy and deductive and inductive reasoning where the students hone their cognitive skills with exercises like these Quot a implies q is false if p is True and q is false Quot or Quot a implies q is True if p is True and q is True Quot or Quot if we have rain then we have  the students in the class have to overcome not Only a lingering perception among some teachers and administrators that poor Black students cannot Excel but also complicated lives that offer an array of distractions from studying. The entire gifted class for instance had to come together last year to pull Elliot Jones the trigonometry Ace out of a Street gang. Theophilus Davis the calculus Whiz has sent College applications Only to the schools that can accommodate his Girlfriend and the baby they Are expecting in april. M Nar every Day. The class salutatorian Siinda Sargent worries about things that other gifted students can take for granted. Quot these other students done to Wake up in the morning like i do sometimes Quot she said Quot and wonder a Man How am i going to get to school today i done to have the bus  Quot for most of them just reaching school is dangerous partly because their special status creates resentment among other students. Quot the problem is getting there and getting Back Home so you can get there the next Day Quot said Davis who has been attacked several times on his Way to school once by assailants wielding baseball bats. He got away without serious injury. Several of the students live in housing projects where rival gang members shoot at adversaries from the roofs and some of students have been walking past when the shootings occur. Davis said six of his friends had been killed since Grade school. Despite the Odds Oatman a class is now in its third year and this june will have its first graduates. All have been accepted to College. In the 11th, 10th and 9th grades she has 29 other gifted students. Students for traditional gifted programs Are found often in Early childhood primarily through standardized test scores which experts say Are not the Only indicators of aptitude for inner City children. Quot we be Learned that you have to look beyond the test scores Quot said or. Mary m. Frasier director of the Torrance Center for creative studies at the University of Georgia and a past president of the National association for gifted children. She cited programs similar to Oatman a in Cincinnati and Little Rock Ark. Quot we can to take the traditional paradigm and to try to Mold these kids to fit the Model Quot frasier said. Quot one of the greatest problems is identifying these children because people do not believe that there Are gifted children in this population. The question is do we expect them to come to us perfectly Well formed or do we recognize that there will be some gaps to be filled Quot indeed Oatman at first had a Tough time finding students when her choices were based merely on test scores. So she began canvassing teachers at Crane and then at local Grade schools As Well asking them about the students who stood out in other ways. Oatman a chemistry and College preparatory teacher at Crane for 30 years said she was almost ready to quit teaching before she attended a counselling workshop three years ago and got the idea for the program. Students who Are jumping up and Down in their seats to ask questions who never Stop talking who Cut class for a week and then come in and blow the test away who Cut up because they re bored out of their Skull. Those Are the kids i  the daughter of teachers Oatman herself said she had never heard the term Quot gifted Quot while going to Allback schools in Charleston . Her optimism about her students now defies the schools discouraging statistics. Crane s senior class measures in the Bottom one fifth nationally on achievement tests according to the Chicago Board of education. On any Given Day a third of the 1,100 students Are absent from school. More than one out of four freshmen eventually drop out and fewer than one in five students say they plan to go to College. Once Oatman finds her students she never misses a Chance to encourage them constantly reminding them of How smart they Are buying cookies for them when their grades go up and signing remarks in the margins of their papers with the words Quot love j.  Quot there a a whole lot of you can do it encouragement Quot Oatman said. Quot when they hear it enough they finally begin to believe  Crane s gifted class is the Only such program in Chicago where much of the emphasis and most of the Best and brightest students go to the City s four schools with enriched programs or to those in affluent neighbourhoods leaving inner City schools like Crane with Little More than the basics. The gifted student program at Crane is Quot remedial in Many ways Quot said Charles Beirne coordinator of Chicago a gifted High school programs Quot because they re not getting those skills in elementary schools or this kind of experience at  but As a measure of the Success of the program Oatman said the average score on the american College test or act for her gifted students is now 17.3, As against 10.9 among All College bound students at Crane and 14.3 for All College bound students in Chicago Public schools. The National average score was 18.6 last year. The company that administers the test the american College testing program said it did not keep a National average for gifted students. The highest possible score on the test is 35. Wednesday March 21, 1990 the stars and stripes a a a Page a it