How to Improve Advanced Education
Last month, my colleague Adam Tyner released a report on the state of advanced education in America, and the picture it paints is not promising. The majority of districts and charter networks screen for gifted students, but once identified, the programming and acceleration they receive is middling. Too often, kids get a thumbs up, a pat on the back for scoring well, but little additional challenge.
Two of the most common “advanced” programming tools are in-class grouping and differentiation. The former clusters advanced students together during regular lessons and the latter is a catch-all term that suggests a teacher should prepare several versions of the same class materials; a struggling student receives multiple-choice options or sentence frames and an advanced student the same question as an open-ended response. Surely schools can offer more than such meager fare.
Intensive programming for advanced students is functionally nonexistent, at least until students reach high school and their menu of Advanced Placement courses. Only four percent of elementary schools allow grade-skipping for specific content areas (like math) and only one percent of districts have separate gifted schools. Tyner concludes that well over half of districts deserve a failing grade for the comprehensiveness of their policies.
Such ambivalence towards gifted education has not always been the case. After the USSR launched Sputnik, for example, there was a flurry of anxious activity to help American students catch up to their Soviet counterparts. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, which included a gusher of funds to screen for and support students who showed promise in math, science, and engineering.
But the past several decades of education reform witnessed a fundamental shift in emphasis, typified in the landmark policy “No Child Left Behind.” The title itself signals a focus on lifting struggling students up instead of boosting successful students higher — no doubt a worthwhile goal but a shift in priority still. Closing the achievement gap is the sought-after holy grail, not competition on the international stage.
Unfortunately, in recent years, that emphasis has too often manifested in efforts to drag gifted students down. Chicago approved a motion to close their selective high schools and Seattle wants to close 11 such institutions by 2027. For a decade, San Francisco has barred 8th graders from advancing into Algebra early. Former New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio spent his tenure promising to dismantle the Big Apple’s gifted programming. Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron has proven sadly prophetic, achieving equality through handicapping talented individuals.
Thankfully, these initiatives have not proceeded uncontested. State-level lawmakers are working on legislation to block Chicago’s closures, a ballot initiative in San Francisco passed to return algebra to 8th grade, and de Blasio’s replacement Mayor Eric Adams ran on a commitment to advanced education. Even so, there’s a large contingent of education reformers who hold advanced education in disrepute.
But Fordham president Michael Petrilli has rightly argued that achieving equal outcomes through tearing down is entirely backward. A “No Child Left Behind” philosophy should ensure promising youth from marginalized backgrounds have access to springboards that propel them into high-achieving careers. If the popular phrase “talent is equally distributed, but opportunities are not” is true, then policy-making efforts should insist on expanding those opportunities, not stifling talent.
Tyner reviews several policies that could bolster such efforts. As mentioned, universal screening – testing all children for advanced potential — is already popular but should be ubiquitous. Similarly, if too few students have access to accelerated coursework, districts should expand the number of advanced classes, accelerated schools, and after-school programs. Finally, where high schools already offer plenty of honors or Advanced Placement courses, elementary and middle schools have a distinct dearth of offerings.
Historically, arguments for advanced education have centered on American society broadly. Will our schools create the future doctors, aerospace engineers, cutting-edge scientists, and literary giants that will keep us competitive with China, Russia, and other international competitors, both military and economic? A persuasive and important argument.
But I think the justification is even simpler and smaller: the individual student. Too often, advanced students get a dismissive “they’ll be fine.” Indeed, surveys have found that 80 percent of teachers report that struggling students are likely to get one-on-one attention but only 5 percent said the same of gifted students. Don’t all children deserve attention from their teacher and curriculum that challenges them? There’s an assumption that gifted students will do well regardless, so they get overlooked — and it’s so unfair.
