The math and science academy's first decade
Illinois' residential high school for gifted kids is aiming to show what works for the cream of the crop will work elsewhere

Emily Hutchins is mapping cyberspace. Ross Cornell is choreographing a dance. Richard Goetze is exploring the connections between physics and math.

All three are students at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy for gifted kids in Aurora. And this month their teachers have reason to celebrate.

Ten years ago the state's politicians took a bold step when they created the state-funded residential high school. The move was controversial because it was opposed by many educators who believed the state would be spending too much money on too few kids. But academy supporters say the critics were wrong. They believe their students prove the point.

The academy was the brainchild of physicist Leon Lederman, who convinced then-Gov. James R. Thompson to sign on. Lederman, a Nobel Prize winner, believes public schools aren't equipped to meet the needs of the brightest students. "When they are unusual like this, in a normal school they very often have to suppress their brightness because that makes them different. And kids at that age don't want to be different."

Emily Hutchins, a senior from West Chicago, is right at home with her classmates. She has decided to become a doctor. Ross Comell, a sophomore from Mt. Pulaski, and Richard Goetze, a junior from Griggsville, are drawn to computers. The academy, which is not constrained by standard rules and regulations, is free to give them the chance to explore those interests.

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Photographs courtesy Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy These seventh and eighth graders (above and on the facing page) spent a week in July learning that math and science can be fun. They joined 160 other junior high school students on the Math and Science Academy's Aurora campus for one of the school's most popular outreach programs.

In fact, as Illinois politicians continue to debate the wisdom of allowing schools to experiment with educational approaches, the Math and Science Academy could be looked to as the first state-supported "charter school." Gov. Jim Edgar called for similar "charters" with 12 schools throughout the state. Those schools would receive state funding but would be free of most state rules. Edgar's proposal didn't get out of the legislature last spring, but the idea could be considered again this fall or next spring. Rep. Mary Lou Cowlishaw, who chairs the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, says compromise language is being worked out.

Meanwhile, the academy operates with few restrictions. It doesn't have to abide by the school code or hire state-certified teachers, though most of its faculty members are certified and have advanced degrees. Twenty-five percent of its teachers have doctorates.

The school is located 35 miles west of Chicago along I-88, within Illinois' Research and Development Corridor. It resembles a college campus more than a high school, and is home to 650 sophomores, juniors and seniors. Admission, based on grades, test scores and recommendations, is highly competitive. This year the academy turned away more than 700 students who had applied for 234 slots.

The school's core teaching philosophy is interdisciplinary. Students choose from advanced courses in science, mathematics, the arts and humanities — all of which emphasize connections within and across fields. In essence, the focus is on quality of understanding rather than quantity of information. Learning is problem-based; books are merely resources. For example, Emily's project on the Internet is designed to give her instructors a guide to resources they can share with other teachers across the state.

Students work on individual and group research in all areas of study. To promote the team approach to investigation and discovery, neither grade point averages nor class rankings are used. And, unique to the academy but not to higher education or to the working world, students spend every sixth school day on research, seminars, field trips and meetings with mentors. Through the mentor program, students conduct on-site research with scientists and scholars in corporations, educational institutions and laboratories in the Chicago area.

Shaky fiscal support

Still, fiscal backing for the academy was shaky at first — in the second year money had to be appropriated during the fall veto session just to keep the doors open — but support solidified as the school matured. Last year, school administrators calculated expenses of $18,000 per student. But the tab for a year's worth of schooling for each student is actually about $8,000, after accounting for the living expenses of residential students and the costs of programs aimed at other students throughout the state. (The cost per student in public schools ranges from $3,000 to $12,000.) Still, the expense of educating a few hundred gifted students has been a bone of contention. Early on, the academy's budget was moved from the State Board of Education to the Board of Higher Education. (The rationale is that the academy operates more like a college anyway.) In the current fiscal year, the school is budgeted to get $12.3 million in state tax dollars. That's more than a three-fold increase over 1987.

"What [the academy] does is aggregate talent," says Stephanie Marshall, the school's executive director. Then, as if defending against an oft-wielded charge, she says the school is by definition not elitist. "If you look elitist up in the dictionary, it is separation by social class. We're a very diverse community: racially, ethnically, geographically, socioeconomically. It's an enormously diverse community."

Illinois is one of 10 states that has residential public institutions for kids talented in math and science, but it is the only state with a three- instead of two-year program. "All of the other states wish they had a three-year program because it is more difficult to do in a two-year period of time what we can do," says Marshall. She says the school aims to shape critical thinking and leadership skills.

Illinois' support for the academy is even more remarkable in the national context. A 1993 U.S. Department of Education

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report found that only two cents out of every $100 spent in education went to provide opportunities for academically gifted students. Charles J. Sykes, writing in a Chicago Tribune Magazine article in August, points out that bright kids are most often hurt by the very people hired to advance them. Over the past two decades, education leaders have been moving in the direction of eliminating competition in schools. Working for good grades often is not applauded. "In American schools today 'elitism' is regarded with suspicion, while 'fairness' and 'equity' are regarded with almost totemic awe," writes Sykes, author of Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add.

Marshall has a doctorate in education and has taught gifted students in the public schools. She says the academy was directed by the legislature to develop an exemplary educational environment for students whose talents may not have been met in the public schools because, typically, there are so few of them.

"What public schools have done in the past to address the needs of very talented kids is to accelerate them, to move them from second grade to fourth grade, or third grade to fifth grade, and therefore they lose their chronological peer group in some ways. Or to have them tutor other kids, work with other learners, because they don't often know what to do with [the brightest students] in the classroom."

Lederman says one effect of gathering bright students together is improved performance on state and national exams. The average ACT scores at the academy have been reported to be the highest in the nation for the past five years. Students have brought home scores of other honors, including the highest team score in the nation (a perfect score) on the American High School Math Exam; a perfect score on the National Latin Exam; first in the state in the Scholastic Bowl; prizes in essay, humanities and music contests; and the top prize in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the highest science prize in the nation for high schoolers.

A learning laboratory

But the academy is more than the sum of its exceptionally talented students. Most people involved with the school believe its real worth is as an educational laboratory, a place where new ideas can be tested in a safe and encouraging environment, then exported to other schools in the state.

An example of the academy's ability to react to its students' needs is Dave Workman's physics class. Workman designed an all-female class after one of his former students told him that she felt like she was swimming "in a pool of sharks" when she was in a class dominated by boys. This student's comment was given additional weight because she made it after winning the prestigious Westinghouse prize, an award usually won by males. Workman judged the all-girl class a successful experiment, saying one of the things he learned when concentrating on gender-based approaches was that learning is more emotion-driven than logic-driven and that both males and females can be affected by classroom environment. "It told us we can't teach one way to all people," he says.

The academy is working with the Mt. Vernon schools in southern Illinois on similar gender issues in math and science. Other outreach projects utilize the school's emphasis on technology. The academy is wired to one of Chicago's inner city elementary schools, the Walter Dyett Middle School, by two-way television. The program is a model for distance learning.

In the summer, seventh and eighth graders spend a week in Aurora learning that math and science can be fun. The same program, geared for ninth and 10th graders, is held at Eastern Illinois University. And the academy and teachers from Illinois State University want to take the program to that campus next year.

But students aren't the only ones doing the learning. Through the academy, state grants are awarded to teachers who need money to try out new ideas or to implement successful methods. Last year, 244 teachers received awards totaling nearly $250,000. The state contributed another $260,000 to teams that are exploring better ways to teach math and science.

Tying his pitch to the school's 10th anniversary, former Gov. Thompson is working to step up corporate support for research and development projects to advance math and science education. Thompson now chairs the fund board. Private support was part of the academy's original "charter," and corporate leaders have donated millions of dollars in gifts and technology. Nevertheless, state dollars still make up the bulk of the school's budget.

Thompson says the fund board serves the academy much like a university alumni fund does. "Until these students get out in the world and start making money, we oldsters have to help them," Thompson says.

Michael Birck, president of Tellabs and new president of the fund board, believes there should be some receptive ears in the corporate community. It makes good business sense, he argues, to support the minds that will be solving the problems of the 21st century.

Planting a seed in fertile soil

Leon Lederman believes the school is on the verge of proving its worth to Illinois taxpayers. He says the real "socko impact" will come in the next five or so years when the first alumni will be leaving graduate schools and making their marks on society. "That's going to have a growing impact as, one after another, they do something spectacular." There is a global crisis, Lederman says, in which science and technology are not the whole answer, but to steer 10 billion people in a direction that won't destroy the environment is a fundamental science problem. "And some kid at the math and science academy is going to help out with that." That kid may turn out to be Emily. And maybe Ross or Richard will do Bill Gates one better. They'll get a shot at it anyway.

Looking to Aldous Huxley, Lederman, emeritus director of Fermi National Laboratory, draws an analogy from The Young Archimedes. It's about an English family that, while vacationing in Italy, sees a boy drawing triangles in the sand. It turns out he is a mathematical genius. The family wants to take the boy back to England for schooling. The boy's father refuses, saying he is needed as a farmhand. Lederman says the moral of that story — a seed falling on barren soil — is something we as a society must avoid. "These gifted students are the seeds of a tremendous treasure. It doesn't take many of them to make a profound effect on the world."

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