Writing for the Fordham Institute, Scott J. Peters and Jonathan Plucker recently reviewed the research on student ability grouping in middle and high schools. Excerpts from the piece appear below: One of the most contentious debates in American education focuses on whether to group students into classrooms using some measure of prior achievement. Whole class Read more about Should schools group students by ability?[…]
Writing for The Hechinger Report, Jill Barshay reviews the research basis on gifted education. Excerpts of the piece appear below: Researchers have been studying ways to diversify the ranks of gifted-and-talented programs. David Card, an economist from the University of California, Berkeley, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics in October 2021, has found Read more about What Research Tells Us about Gifted Education[…]
Writing for The 74, Kevin Mahnken recently released a piece updating readers on The Gifted Gap, or the gap between talented Black and low-income students and their whiter, more affluent peers. Excerpts of the piece appear below: Efforts to improve the quality of American education often focus, implicitly or explicitly, on students who are achieving Read more about The Gifted Gap[…]
Dr. Jennifer Glynn served as Director of Research and Evaluation at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation from 2011 to 2020. In a recent article for the National Association for Gifted Children, she shares 10 of her key takeaways related to gifted education and the gifted identification gap. Excerpts of the article appear below: After almost Read more about Key Takeaways from a Decade of Research on Gifted Education[…]
Writing for the Fordham Institute, Joni Lakin and Jonathan Wai review the struggles that visual learners encounter in traditional schooling and outline the loss to the STEM field when these students decide STEM is not for them. Excerpts of the piece appear below: Students who have the kinds of talent scientists and engineers need to Read more about Many Students with the Potential to Excel in STEM Fields Struggle in School[…]
Writing for the Fordham Institute, Chris Yalumaby reviews the “gifted gap” between low- and high-income students and the compounding effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. Excerpts from the piece appear below: The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the inequities that have long existed in the K-12 education system. School closures due to the outbreak are particularly Read more about The “Gifted Gap” Was Already Growing Before the Pandemic[…]
Writing for the Fordham Foundation, Jonathan Plucker reviews the research on programs for advanced learners. Excerpts from the piece appear below: Advanced learning programs are effective, and we have reams of research to support that conclusion. What follows is a rough summary of intervention research, listed from more to less evidence of effectiveness. For the Read more about Do Programs for Advanced Learners Work?[…]
According to the Office of Civil Rights within the U.S. Education Department, there are approximately 3.2 million students in public schools in gifted and talented programs. Although Federal law acknowledges that children with gifts and talents have unique needs that are not traditionally offered in regular school settings, it offers no specific provisions, mandates, or Read more about Issue Brief: Meeting the Needs of the Gifted Learner[…]
Schools have long failed to cultivate the innate talents of many of their young people, particularly high-ability girls and boys from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. This failure harms the economy, widens income gaps, arrests upward mobility, and exacerbates civic decay and political division. To address these issues, researchers Christopher Yaluma and Adam Tyner of the Read more about Is There a Gifted Gap?[…]
A new AEI paper by Jonathan Wai and Frank C. Worrell, “Fully Developing the Potential of Academically Advanced Students: Helping Them Will Help Society” argues that gifted students are often left out of education reform conversations. In the $59.8 billion 2015 federal education budget, one dollar was spent on gifted and talented education for every Read more about Fully Developing the Potential of Academically Advanced Students[…]
No Child Left Behind meant well, but it had a pernicious flaw: It created strong incentives for schools to focus all their energy on helping low-performing students get over a modest “proficiency” bar. Meanwhile, it ignored the educational needs of high achievers, who were likely to pass state reading and math tests regardless of what Read more about High Stakes for High Achievers: State Accountability in the Age of ESSA[…]
In the early days of the accountability movement, Jeb Bush’s Florida developed an innovative approach to evaluating school quality. First, the state looked at individual student progress over time—making it one of the first to do so. Then it put special emphasis on the gains (or lack thereof) of the lowest-performing kids in the state. Read more about ESSA Accountability: Don’t Forget the High Achievers[…]
Over a the past several months Real Clear Education has been spotlighting schools and teachers participating in the Opportunity Culture initiative, a movement launched in 2011 by education policy and consulting firm Public Impact. Opportunity Culture models are aimed at improving the quality of education by extending the reach of excellent teachers and their teams, encouraging teacher Read more about When Top Students Drop: Why Even Good Schools Need to Grow[…]
A recent survey and report conducted on the State of the State in Gifted Education by both the National Association for Gifted Children and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted released some surprising information on the (sometimes inadequate) plans, laws, and services in place for gifted and talented children across the Read more about State of the States Report says Gifted and Talented Children are Overlooked[…]
Statistics tell us that despite 61 years of integration and attention to equity, not much has changed in many parts of the United States. Students in high-poverty schools lack the supports needed to become college ready, and school districts that serve the highest percentages of low-income students and students of color receive significantly less in Read more about September Issue Brief: Equity Issues in Education[…]
Chester E. Finn Jr. And Brandon L. Wright of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute have recently written a preview article in the Wall Street Journal for their forthcoming book, “Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students.” The article inverts the typical narrative of a focus on equity, and asks if we Read more about The Bright Students Left Behind[…]