A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Part II.

The Current Status of Education for the Nation's Most Talented Students

• How states and districts identify gifted and talented students;
• The number of students served;
• The kind of support available for educating gifted and talented students;
• The kind of education most gifted and talented students receive in elementary and secondary schools; and
• Effective programs for gifted and talented students and the qualities these programs possess that might benefit all American students.

In one recent national survey, 73 percent of school districts indicated that they have adopted the Marland definition; few said that they use it to identify and serve any area of giftedness other than high general intelligence as measured on IQ and achievement tests. Most mainly use tests and teacher recommendations to admit students to gifted and talented programs, limiting participation to students with high general intelligence and good school records and missing many outstanding students with other talents. This practice ignores extensive evidence from psychologists and neuroscientists that youngsters can be intelligent in many different ways, all of which schools can help to develop.

Several categories of talented children are particularly neglected in programs for top students. These include culturally different children (including minority and economically disadvantaged students), females (who are underserved in mathematics and science programs), students with disabilities, high potential students who underachieve in school, and students with artistic talent. Some schools are discouraged from serving these students by state laws or regulations which require the schools to use certain IQ cutoff scores or specific levels of performance on standardized tests if they wish to receive state funding for gifted and talented programs. However, even in states that do not have test score cutoffs, local schools often choose to use test scores because they are easier to determine and "safer" than more subjective procedures. While state and local definitions display good intentions, the practices used to assess and identify students are often unsatisfactory.

Number of Students Served

• Twenty years ago, few programs existed for gifted and talented students. By 1990, 38 states served more than 2 million K--12 gifted students. The remaining states did not report the number of students served, although we know that such programs exist in every state.
• The number and percentage of students identified as gifted and talented varies from state to state due to differences in state laws and local practices. For example, 4 states identify more than 10 percent of their students as gifted and talented, while in 21 states fewer than 5 percent are identified as such.
• Sixty-five percent of the public schools, which together served 75 percent of all public school 8th graders, had some kind of opportunity for gifted and talented students, according to the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988, which looked at 8th graders throughout the nation.
• Some minority groups are more likely to be served than others. The NELS study found that about 8.8 percent of all 8th-grade public school students participated in gifted and talented programs. Racial and ethnic groups were represented as follows:
  • 17.6 percent of Asian students;
  • 9.0 percent of white, non-Hispanic students;
  • 7.9 percent of black students;
  • 6.7 percent of Hispanic students; and
  • 2.1 percent of American Indian students.
• States that use IQ score cutoffs to identify gifted and talented students are more likely to have larger disparities among racial and ethnic groups.
• Economically disadvantaged students were significantly underserved, according to NELS data. Only 9 percent of students in gifted and talented education programs were in the bottom quartile of family income, while 47 percent of program participants were from the top quartile in family income.

Support for Students

When asked, "Would you support or oppose special funding for a program to provide a more challenging education for the smartest and most gifted children, as long as it did not reduce what was offered to average and slow learners?," 84 percent said they would support the funding. Little difference existed in the responses of parents with children identified as having special abilities and in the responses of parents who did not.

In the past 20 years, many state and federal policies have acknowledged the widespread public support to serve outstanding students by setting up special programs. However, many programs for the gifted and talented that began in the 1970s and 1980s have been curtailed or had their funds cut in the past few years because of state and local budget crises.

• State and local expenses. It is hard to estimate how much is spent on gifted and talented students because some states do not keep records of these funds. We do know, however, that in 1990, 37 states and trust territories reported spending almost $395 million in state and local funds on gifted and talented education. This figure, however, represents only 2 cents out of every $100 spent on elementary and secondary education. Furthermore, it is likely that this figure was a high point for funding. Budget crises and opposition to programs have led recently to program cuts in many states and districts and have tended to fall unevenly on programs for gifted and talented students.
• State policies that support programs for the talented. Twenty years ago, only seven states had legislation and funding for gifted and talented education programs. By 1990, most states had legislation and some financial support for these programs. The policies, however, vary greatly from state to state. For example, by 1990
  • Twenty-six states and trust territories required that schools provide specialized services for gifted and talented students;
  • Twenty-seven states and territories passed discretionary legislation that encouraged districts to provide programs for gifted and talented students; and
  • Six states and territories lacked legislation or state support for gifted and talented programs.
• Federal involvement. A small federal program, which gave money to states to develop programs for gifted and talented students, began with the publication of the Marland Report in 1972. That federal effort ended in 1981, and, until 1988, the federal government suspended its direct involvement in education for gifted and talented students.

  The Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Act of 1988 reestablished a federal presence. This modestly funded program (just under $10 million in 1992) supports demonstration grants, a national research center, and national leadership activities designed to focus attention on the needs of students with demonstrated or potential talent. Priority funding is given to efforts to serve gifted and talented students who are economically disadvantaged, speak limited English, or have disabilities.

Current Elementary School Programs

• The regular school curriculum does not challenge gifted and talented students. Recent studies of American education have criticized the curriculum for its lack of rigor. The problem is evident in textbooks, which, despite known weaknesses, remain the chief education tool used to instruct American students. In nearly every subject, textbooks tackle too many topics and cover them superficially. Moreover, many textbooks have decreased in difficulty by two grade levels in the last 20 years, and few if any publishers produce textbooks aimed at above-average students.

  The "basic skills" movement, which sought to help students struggling with the regular curriculum to learn more effectively by simplifying learning activities, further weakened the regular school curriculum. All children, not just those with exceptional talent, have suffered from a narrowing of the curriculum; but the gap between the level of the curriculum and the abilities of talented students is the largest of all student groups.

• Most academically talented students have already mastered up to one-half of the required curriculum offered to them in elementary school. In one recent national study of five content areas, elementary school teachers eliminated an average of 35 to 50 percent of the regular curriculum for gifted and talented students after tests at the start of the school year showed that these youngsters had already mastered that much of what was to be taught. These students were then allowed to work on other activities during the time they were released from working on materials that they had already mastered. When the students were retested at the end of the school year, the gifted students excused from large portions of the regular curriculum did better than a control group of gifted and talented students in science and mathematics concepts and stayed even with the control group in all other subjects.
• Classroom teachers do little to accommodate the different learning needs of gifted children. In a large national survey, most teachers said they give the same assignments to both gifted and average students almost all the time, and few said they use many "higher level" teaching strategies in their classrooms.

  In a follow-up study involving classroom visits, researchers found that 84 percent of assignments for gifted students were the same as those made to the whole class in the five subjects surveyed. The most individualization took place in mathematics, but even there only 11 percent of activities for gifted students contained advanced content and instruction.

• Most specialized programs are available for only a few hours a week. One study reported that 72 percent of districts with elementary programs for gifted students use the "pull out" program or resource room approach, where students leave their regular classrooms for a few hours a week to work on special projects. This has not proved to be an especially successful program for most special populations. Other popular approaches include "enrichment" offerings, where students receive extra opportunities to learn, and independent study. Some schools allow students to enter a grade level ahead of schedule, move at their own pace through the curriculum, or offer self-contained classes for talented students. A few school districts provide special schools or allow students to move significantly ahead of their age peers. Many school districts use a combination of approaches. While programs for gifted students often provide challenging learning opportunities, most students with outstanding talent spend most of their time in the regular curriculum with few differentiated opportunities.
• Students talented in the arts are offered few challenging opportunities. A few districts provide intense or accelerated arts instruction in magnet schools designed for elementary and middle school students, but such opportunities are not widely available throughout the country. Many elementary schools offer no fine arts instruction, and budget cuts have eliminated arts teachers in other elementary and middle schools. Without basic opportunities in the visual and performing arts, outstanding talent in these disciplines is difficult to discover and cultivate.

Current Secondary School Programs

• Appropriate opportunities in middle schools are scattered and uncoordinated. Educators have struggled for a long time to find the best way to serve students during their complicated middle school years. In the current reform conversation, middle school educators have spoken forcefully about the importance of addressing students' individual needs. They have also indicated that students should not be singled out or receive special instruction--whether in sports, arts, or academics--for fear of damaging the self-esteem of those not selected.

  The consequent ambivalence about "special" programs has led many middle schools to eliminate individualized learning opportunities previously offered to gifted students. Too few middle schools now provide their most talented students with advanced learning opportunities, mentors, extracurricular activities based on students' special interests, or other options for developing their potential. More needs to be done to create middle schools that meet the needs of all children.

• High school schedules do not meet the needs of talented students. As Ernest L. Boyer writes in High School:

  What gifted students want is flexibility: to be allowed to go at their own pace, to satisfy course requirements as quickly as possible, and to move on to new areas of learning. One bright young man put it this way:

  Believe it or not, we don't necessarily want to reduce the number of required courses (at least some of us do not). But must we be held to the same timetables as others--so many hours or months or years of a certain subject--if we are able to grasp the fundamentals and move on to a more complex treatment? Or to a new subject altogether?

  Writer and filmmaker John Sayles describes the kind of education that worked best for him:

  In general, I feel like what was most helpful about school when it worked was the existence of a structure, but with the leeway to go beyond it if you had the inclination. I think both the structure and the freedom were equally important; the structure giving something to react to or from, and the freedom being that there was some encouragement for original thinking as long as you didn't make too much trouble.

• The college preparatory curriculum in the United States generally does not require hard work from able students. Students who never have opportunities to work to their abilities never learn to do so. A recent study of America's highest achieving students conducted by Who's Who Among American High School Students found that most of these students study 1 hour or less a day; only 21 percent study 11 hours or more a week. One high school honor roll student indicated that she seldom received homework and studied only when she expected to be tested the next day. A high school valedictorian summarized the consequences of not learning how to work:

  I breezed through classes in 12 years, graduated from high school as the valedictorian, and then almost flunked out of college because I never learned to work hard at learning. I feel angry, jealous, and cheated about the potential that was lost as a result of my high school's lack of special programs for the gifted.

• Small-town and rural schools often have limited resources and are unable to offer advanced classes and special learning opportunities. Rural schools are the least likely to have special programs for highly able 8th-grade students, according to 1988 NELS data. The low population, poverty level, and generally low tax base prevent most rural districts from providing the same range of options for talented students that larger communities can provide. This is especially troubling because there are often fewer other community resources available in rural areas, making the school the primary center of intellectual and cultural life for students.
• Specialized schools, magnets, and intensive summer programs serve only a fraction of the secondary students who might benefit from them. Many larger school districts have established magnet schools to serve various students' needs. Some, such as the Bronx High School for Science which has produced many leading scientists and Nobel laureates, have existed for many years. Eleven states have established residential schools for advanced instruction in mathematics and science; other states have established Governor's Schools or intensive summer opportunities in a variety of subjects. These schools, however, are few and serve only a fraction of the students who would benefit from them.
• Dual enrollment in secondary school and college is uncommon. One solution to an unchallenging high school curriculum is to allow some secondary school students to enroll in higher education courses. Minnesota began a postsecondary options program in 1985 to allow high school juniors and seniors to take postsecondary classes at state expense. Earned credits count toward high school graduation, and once students have graduated from high school, they can also ask postsecondary institutions to accept these credits. A handful of other states have followed suit, but such arrangements are the exception rather than the rule.

Residential schools for gifted and talented students, summer programs like Governor's Schools, and the Talent Search academic programs have developed alternative teaching strategies and interesting curriculum approaches. National programs--such as Future Problem Solving, Odyssey of the Mind, National History Day, and the Westinghouse Science Scholars Program--promote and reward critical thinking and problem solving and are often carried out through the gifted and talented education programs in schools. Teaching strategies like the Paideia Program, Philosophy for Children, and the Great Books reading series also are often used in programs for gifted and talented students.

Although most of these programs were not designed exclusively for gifted and talented students, they usually have not been implemented in regular education because educators did not realize their potential for improving all of American education. Now, however, many educators believe that the knowledge and experience that gifted education has gained from these and other outstanding programs can be used to upgrade all of education and are calling for this to be done.

Many programs for talented students are so new and limited that long-term research to gauge their effectiveness has not been completed. The limited evaluations available, however, are encouraging. Through the new federal Javits Gifted and Talented Education Program, more in-depth studies are under way. Javits grants projects seek out and provide educational programs for exceptionally talented students who are economically disadvantaged, speak limited English, or have disabilities. These programs are committed to finding and nurturing the strengths in children, providing promising students with important subject matter to study, and encouraging the habits of hard work. They demonstrate the kind of practices that should be available for many more economically disadvantaged children.

In Sum . . .

To counter these negatives for students with outstanding talents and to improve education for all of America's students, schools must:

• Expand effective education programs and incorporate more advanced materials into the regular school program;
• Provide all students with opportunities to solve problems, analyze materials and situations, and learn from real-life experiences;
• Identify students who need individual or special opportunities, using test data only as appropriate;
• Serve students identified as having outstanding talent in many places--the regular classroom, a special class, the community, at a university or a museum, in front of a computer, or anywhere the opportunity meets the need; and
• Create flexible schools that enable all students, including the most able, to be grouped and regrouped according to their needs and interests.

[Part I.]

[Part III.]