Curriculum+Compacting

Curriculum Compacting is defined by Enersen, Robinson and Shore (2007) as a program that will "assess high-ability students' knowledge and skill development in particular content areas prior to instruction, to identify what they already know and can do, and to provide them with instruction and curricula that meets their academic needs." The goal is to avoid re-teaching subject material that students have already learned and thus this option relies on preassessment in order for teachers to make decisions about what and how to compact.

Research has shown Curriculum Compacting to not just be a good idea for gifted services, but in fact to be necessary so that gifted students do not become bored. Archambault (1993) found that gifted students spend a large amount of their school year practicing and reviewing concepts that they had already learned and even mastered.

The evidence for academic growth that Curriculum Compacting can provide is evident in research. In a study by Reis (1998), students that had 40-50% of their curriculum eliminated and replaced with enriched content scored above the 93 percentile on end of the year state administered test. Although the number of studies on academic growth are few in comparison to others that Rogers (1992, 2002, 2005) examined in her synthesis, those studies do support Curriculum Compacting with an academic growth over four fifths of an additional year of content knowledge gained in classes focused on math or science (this number drops to a quarter of a year additional growth for language arts and social studies). The only program option that yielded a higher result in Roger synthesis was Grade Skipping.

Common sense and the research seem to support the notion that if a student has already learned and mastered the material, then there is no need for them to spend much of their school day reviewing and practicing these skills. In fact, high ability students that are not continually challenged, we know from research run the risk of losing interest in school. Curriculum Compacting thus presents an option that makes sense. How can this be delivered in the school system? Curriculum Compacting makes sense as a gifted program as the gifted facilitator can work to develop the compacted program together with the general education teacher. The student and facilitator can work together to set goals and establish a series of supports and modification to go along and with the prescribed curriculum. Curriculum Compacting could also work in the form of a stand alone gifted class. The gifted facilitator could teach a specific subject (taking the place of having that subject taught to gifted students in the general education setting) and could develop the class based on diagnostic assessments, thus compacting the class based on what the students have already learned. In accordance with Roger's research, this type of class could greatly benefit especially math and science classes.