OPINION: The VSB’s revisioning of the MACC is, for lack of a better word, disastrous.
UPDATED THURSDAY FEB. 3, 2022: CLARIFICATION REGARDING THE INTAKE OF THE CURRENT PROGRAM
OPINION: The authors’ of this article are all former MACC students and current student journalists with The Griffins’ Nest. The views expressed here are their’s alone.
(Disclosure: one of this article’s two editors is actively reporting on MACC)
The Multi-Age Cluster Class (MACC) is an accelerated and enriched learning program offered in three schools in Vancouver for gifted students in Grades 4 to 7. Through its highly autonomous, project-based curriculum, the MACC program has offered many students, including us, the authors, a variety of incredible opportunities to enrich our learning and reach our full potential.
Recently, the VSB announced its “revisioning” of the MACC program in order to make it more equitable.
As MACC alumni, we were obviously interested in hearing what the District had to say about the issue. And after looking into the VSB’s proposal, we were disappointed, to say the least. Nothing the VSB was proposing seemed inclined to keep the original facets of the program that have helped us all so much.
The school board’s “revisioning” of the MACC would essentially break down the program and establish a completely new one, which they plan to call Gifted Enrichment Centres (GECs).
The VSB has proposed, in place of MACC’s comprehensive multi-year program, a shorter-term challenge program at Gifted Enrichment Centres. They suggest that students in the new program will be able to participate in “engaging enrichment activities with new friends and peers” without the need to permanently leave their current school and friends. The VSB claims that their research has indicated that six weeks is the ideal length for enrichment programming, although this was found to be misinformation in a Griffins’ Nest report published last week. With this, as well as an expansion of the program into all four quadrants of the district, they can admit up to 720 new students per year into their program, rather than the 80 across four classes they currently do.
What needs to be understood is that the MACC is extremely reliant on a permanent transfer of schools until elementary graduation. Because of its high-intensity, highly individualised approach to project-based learning, it is not only difficult, but impossible to offer the same level of enrichment in a short-term program. We would never have been able to create award-winning science and heritage fair projects in only six weeks. As such, the new Gifted Enrichment Centre program is not even comparable to the MACC. The GECs are enrichment programs (it says so in the name!), which are entirely different from the gifted education program of the MACC.
Now, it’s understandable that the VSB thinks that MACC is too inaccessible. There are only four MACCs in Vancouver, and three of these classes are on the West Side. Only one class is available on the east side at Tecumseh Elementary. The VSB’s idea to combat this problem is to create GECs in all four quadrants of the district, that are, in theory, within walking distance from every single child in the district.
We, as former MACC students can certainly vouch for the idea of expansion. As students who were required to take public transit to school every day from the age of 10, the idea of expanding the MACC seems ideal. But that’s not what the VSB’s doing. They’re replacing the program with something new and completely different. If the MACC program is expanded, rather than chopped up into little pieces, more students can go through the full MACC experience, rather than a mere fraction of the program.
Another main focus of the GECs is to prevent, in the VSB’s own words, the “segregation” of gifted students that has apparently been created by the MACC program. The VSB fails to recognize two things, however. Firstly, MACC does not isolate students in the program. In fact, MACC students are almost as integrated into the school community as any other student. Secondly, the VSB’s “solution” creates an extra layer of isolation in itself.
Many gifted students tend to struggle with feeling connected to the school community before they even attend these programs. Sometimes, these young gifted students have different interests than other children, and almost all of them learn at a much faster speed than their peers. Many MACC students, ourselves included, can recall feeling alone, bored, and isolated before attending MACC due to the lack of peers they can relate to. MACC, on the other hand, provides a continuous community of like-minded students who share similar interests and experiences.
MACC certainly does not isolate itself from the rest of the host school. We were all offered to be a part of the same school sports teams, clubs, and events. Many of us even earned community service hours by working with students in various classes around the school. Our class wasn’t physically isolated either; we were in the same building as the rest of the school and sometimes learned subjects together.
The solution that the VSB has proposed is contradictory to the ‘isolation’ problem they claim to solve. Their solution is to send gifted students to a six-week program at a different school. Although they have criticised MACC for doing something very similar, they are taking students out of their school communities for six weeks and placing them somewhere completely new. In the case of MACC, this loss of community is usually replaced by the community found in MACC over time. The proposed GEC system removes the possibility of such a community developing in the program. Spending a few weeks with similar-minded students does not give students enough time to form truly meaningful bonds and it will not provide them with a support system the way MACC does. Switching schools is a scary and anxiety-inducing experience, and the new program will force students who choose to seek further enrichment to do so not just once, but several times. While the VSB claims that the GECs allow students to stay in touch with their current school friends, they are isolating them for weeks at a time. Are students supposed to leave their school for six weeks only to come back and pretend like nothing happened?
Besides, the GEC program likely won’t help gifted students the way the VSB thinks it will. In fact, it could be detrimental to their overall education. While attending the GECs for six weeks, students will be missing crucial parts of the curriculum being taught in their original class. This will be an additional challenge that students who are reintegrating will have to face. The VSB has not proposed a concrete way for students to readjust. They claim that teachers will be given the resources to help these transitions, neglecting the fact that teachers have dozens of other students to teach.
Even more shocking about the new GEC proposal is the so-called “Equity of Admission” issue. In order to be accepted into the MACC, students must pass a Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT) with an IQ of 130 or higher. According to the VSB’s research, these tests are built around Western norms, as these tests compare students to other North American children. Students who have not grown up in “Westernised” families in North America are at a disadvantage, since giftedness is more than just a matter of IQ.
In the VSB’s plan to “revision” MACC, they cite the program being “westernised” as a reason for the change. Without defining this, they are allowing room for speculation on what this truly means. If “non-westernised” families refer to families that come from a variety of cultures and can speak a variety of international languages, then we can certainly say that from our experiences, “non-westernised” students make up the majority of students in MACC. And this is a positive thing! The MACC is open and inclusive to a diverse student population from a variety of cultural backgrounds, which is part of what makes it so special.
If being “Westernised” means the program is heavily influenced by other North American education systems, then the Westernised aspects of MACC only mirror the Westernised aspects of our education system as a whole. Failing to recognize this and removing the MACC program as we know it is an inadequate way to address systemic inequities in our education system.
The VSB’s solution to this sorry excuse of a problem is to base GEC admission on teacher identification and student self-identification. Ignoring the fact that MACC admission is already heavily based on teacher identification and recommendation, we simply cannot rely on student self-identification for admission. Many students would not even know they’re gifted if it weren’t for the existence of a test to tell them so. Many students would simply just consider themselves “smart” or “hard-working” and would never even consider the possibility of giftedness.
On the flip side, student self-identification would also create an increase in students who are unfit for the program being admitted. It’s hard to say no to a student who claims to be gifted, especially if it’s impossible to prove otherwise. If we told you right now that the sky is neon yellow, you would simply have to believe us, especially if you’re too lazy to go outside and find out. The VSB seems to want to cross their fingers and hope that the right students for the program figure out that they’re a good fit for it, and that the unfit students will never try for the program at all.
With its new, ultra-accessible “solution”, the VSB has essentially stripped the MACC program of its entire purpose, which is to serve a small minority of students who truly need an extra challenge in an environment of like-minded people. The bonds that are forged within the new MACC will be non-existent, as will the academic skills gained from completing the program. The Vancouver School Board’s proposal instead makes a step towards a society in which all students receive an almost-equal education, which, according to a study that the school board cites themselves, is inequitable in itself. The MACC may be in need of revitalisation, but the solution for this isn’t to break down the program. It’s to build it up.