A New Way to Identify Gifted Inner-City Kids

WYPR - 88.1 FM Baltimore | By Sheilah Kast,

Published February 1, 2017 at 1:42 PM EST

The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth has had trouble bringing inner-city kids into its programs. African-American kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds haven’t done well on the standardized tests the center typically uses. So the Center is looking for new ways to identify bright kids from underserved neighborhoods. The result is the Baltimore Emerging Scholars Program. Program manager Andrew Moss and Amy Lynne Shelton, director of research at the Center and a professor and associate dean for research in the Johns Hopkins School of Education, both join us. We also hear the impressions of 4th-grader Santino Vaughan, who seemed impressed with an astronomy lesson involving a grapefruit and a flashlight. “We saw the phases of the moon," he says. "We saw the crescent moon, we saw the half moon, we saw the gibbous moon, and then we saw the full moon.”

Sheilah Kast

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am. Originally, she hostedWYPR's Dupont-Columbia University award-winning Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast from 2006 - October2015. She began her career at The Washington Star, where she covered the Maryland and Virginia legislatures, utilities, energy and taxes, as well as financial and banking regulation. She learned the craft of broadcasting at ABC News; as a Washington correspondent for fifteen years, she covered the White House, Congress, and the 1991 Moscow coup that signaled the end of the Soviet empire. Sheilahhas been a substitute host on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and The DianeRehmShow. She has launched and hosted two weekly interview shows on public TV, one about business and one about challenges facing older people.

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Andrea Appleton

Andrea Appleton is a producer for Midday. She comes to WYPR with years of experience as a freelance journalist filing stories for newspapers, magazines, and public radio. She has reported on topics ranging from bull riding to bionic fish, with an emphasis on science. She is also former senior editor of the Baltimore City Paper, and a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism.

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