Hinsdale Community Consolidated School District 181 is examining its gifted program and looking at making some changes including considering whether gifted students should continue to be taken out of  regular schools one day a week for specialized instruction.

The district has 165 middle school students in the gifted program and 87 in the elementary school level. The students currently go one day a week to Monroe School to take part in the Affective and Cognitive Enrichment (ACE) program.

Superintendent Renee Schuster said removing students one day a week “is a part-time solution to a full-time program.”

In addition, Schuster said the district also wants to consider including more students in advanced learning programs.

The district has formulated some goals for the gifted program based on a recent evaluation by consultants from the University of Virginia.

One goal for the district will be to define its educational philosophy overall and its definition of giftedness.

“It would be a philosophy on the education of all students,” she said.

The district also will focus on not simply having students accumulate facts, but creating “enduring understanding.”

“It’s not just memorizing,” she said. “It’s something you have to understand for life.”

The district wants to emphasize creative and critical thinking and decrease the reliance on text books.

“There are pod casts, group work, experiments (that also can be utilized for teaching,) she said.

Increasing differentiation of students and possibly providing in-class coaching rather than removing them one day a week as a means to challenge students is another area that the district will consider.

“It (differentiation) is knowing your students and meeting each of your students’ learning needs,” she said.

The district will look at ways to make a smooth transition to handle what changes may be made to the gifted program such as possibly no longer transporting students to Monroe School one day a week for advanced learning.

“We’ll need to have a transition plan so we don’t have a gap,” she said.

The district will start this month to involve various stakeholders such as teachers and parents in the process of defining the district’s educational philosophy. The district will hire a consultant that will help them develop the philosophy as it applies to educating all students.

“We’re on the right path. We need to keep going,” she said.