Some Portland Public Schools (PPS) students may recall taking a seemingly random test in elementary school that consisted of tediously filling in bubbles on a multiple choice booklet. This test ultimately introduced many students to the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program, with some qualifying students continuing on to ACCESS Academy.
The TAG program has been a way for PPS to recognize academically accomplished young students in the district and challenge them within their own schools — a pursuit that eventually culminated in the creation of ACCESS Academy, a school specifically for TAG students. With its focus on specialized education and advanced academics, TAG’s mission has had lasting effects on participating students.
In 1987, Oregon passed laws requiring school districts to identify TAG students and teach them at higher levels. Upon closer inspection, PPS was found to be inadequately supporting its TAG students. To solve this problem, the district examined Seattle Public Schools’ (SPS) system of advanced learning support.
Following in SPS’ footsteps, PPS created ACCESS Academy, providing a program exclusive to students identified as “highly gifted” in certain academic fields. PPS defined “highly gifted” as scoring in the 99th percentile on a “nationally-normed assessment of Reading, Math, and/or Cognitive Ability from any academic year.”
The ACCESS program was originally envisioned as a first-through-eighth grade school, followed by an atypical high school program. However, the latter never materialized, and the pre-high school program had to temporarily share buildings with neighboring schools for a few years.
In 2017, shortly after becoming superintendent of PPS, Guadalupe Guerrero proposed shutting down ACCESS entirely. He argued that dissolving the existing ACCESS program would be more equitable to all students by allowing more schools the ability to offer personalized education for TAG students.
However, Guerrero was quickly met with tremendous backlash from ACCESS parents and teachers, and many students participated in a walkout to protest the decision outside of the building where ACCESS was then located. This response led Guerrero to apologize to ACCESS parents and PPS later decided to split ACCESS between Vestal Elementary School and Lane Middle School.
As of summer of 2024, ACCESS has been reunified in one building which is located in Southwest Portland and will be enrolling students from second through eighth grade.
Despite ACCESS and TAG’s rocky pasts with the district and community, many students who graduated from ACCESS have had positive experiences.
Nate Coury, a junior at Grant High School and ACCESS alumnus, appreciates how his education was tailored to him at ACCESS. Coury says, “Projects (and) assignments were almost always designed to be adaptable so each individual student could passionately put their best effort into it,” an opportunity he says doesn’t exist to the same extent at Grant.
While Grant’s large size of roughly 2,200 students makes individualized education difficult, Coury thinks that TAG as a whole could be improved to better academically challenge all students in the program. Coury argues that giving TAG students the ability to take advanced classes earlier in high school would “give students an opportunity to develop more than they can currently, and keep TAG students more engaged academically.”
Current ACCESS principal Anthony Bromberg says, “ACCESS is not so much different from other schools, but (it is) working to harness its focused environment to be able to benefit all students at the school.”
Additionally, Bromberg says that ACCESS Academy’s specialized education has shown positive results: “Looking year over year at test scores in particular, many students make gains.” However, Bromberg says that test scores are not the only metric of student success.
Ultimately, Bromberg believes that every student would thrive with a more specialized education. “TAG students,” Bromberg says, “just like all students, benefit from more highly qualified adults being present to partner with and support them.”
Many TAG students that attended ACCESS have found the academics and environment to be beneficial to their learning, and some prefer the tight-knit community that the smaller school provided. However, the transition into a large neighborhood high school from TAG-oriented education has proven difficult for many students within the program.
Samantha Smythe, an ACCESS alumna and current junior at Ida B. Wells High School, says that the contrast between the social scene of ACCESS and PPS high schools is noticeable: “At ACCESS, I knew the name of everyone in my grade. At Ida B. Wells, I’m lucky if I know two or three per class,” she says.
An anonymous ACCESS alumnus praises the school’s welcoming environment. “It was generally a pretty good social environment in elementary (and) middle school,” they say, “especially for people who maybe didn’t fit in at their previous schools.”
While such an environment can allow for a thriving, tight-knit community, it can also be limiting. As Coury points out, it is common for ACCESS alumni to “stay in the same social circles throughout high school,” which may limit opportunities to meet new people and have new social experiences.
A problem faced by the TAG program today is the lack of support that qualifying students receive in high school. More specifically, students who attended ACCESS are required to make a sudden change in their academic lives. At a school such as ACCESS, where the schoolwide curriculums are advancing students in certain subjects, it is easier to find opportunities to get ahead in credits or classes.
In contrast, at PPS high schools each teacher takes on significantly more students. At some high schools, like Grant, hundreds of students in the same grade need to take the same core classes every year. Thus, opportunities for students to get ahead within their regular schedule are more difficult to come by.
Grant junior and ACCESS alumna Lakshmi Shore describes her school’s TAG resources as scarce: “The only way there’s been for TAG students to get ahead is to take classes over the summer…” While ACCESS has provided its students with a uniquely advanced learning environment, the same cannot be said for Grant.
On the PPS TAG website, it is stated that the district’s goal is for “students to have equal access to a rich learning environment and their individual needs met.” In densely populated PPS high schools, thoroughly achieving this goal has proven a daunting task. However, students who attended ACCESS were able to experience the TAG program realized to its fullest extent — and it was profoundly rewarding.
Many students feel that despite offering a promising opportunity for reinventing PPS education, the TAG program has been neglected in high school. Expanding concrete TAG opportunities into more PPS schools would provide considerably more students with the “rich learning environment” that is central to the district’s mission.