Challenging “Gifted” Children Without Labeling Them

In this Education Week article, Scott Peters (University of Wisconsin/Whitewater), Scott Barry Kaufman (University of Pennsylvania), Michael Matthews (University of North Carolina/Charlotte), Matthew McBee (East Tennessee State University/Johnson City), and Betsy McCoach (University of Connecticut/Storrs) argue that when curriculum is delivered in an undifferentiated fashion, many students are “ill served” – those who are far behind, and those who already know the material. 

“Gifted education has been controversial since its earliest days and remains so today,” say the authors. “Given public unease, it is difficult for schools to devote resources to the children who could be learning more quickly and more deeply than the ordinary curriculum allows.” What most schools are doing now for these students is ineffective, they say – either the dose is too small (an hour of advanced instruction a week) or the available funding is spent on tests to identify gifted students, leaving little or nothing for interventions. 

The result is that too many high-achieving students aren’t being challenged and engaged and significant numbers lose their edge as they move through the grades. “Every school has students who could do more if they were appropriately challenged,” say the authors. Every student deserves to learn something new every day.

What is to be done? For starters, Peters et al. believe we need to stop using the label gifted, which “connotes an endowment that some students receive while others do not. Moreover, the term seems to suggest that high academic performance is a permanent quality, both due to chance and applicable to all domains.” The question we should be asking is whether instruction is appropriately rigorous for each child. When the content isn’t challenging enough, there are several possible reasons:

• The student has exceptionally high intelligence.
• The student is highly motivated and works especially hard in the subject.
• The student has already learned the content at home.

Bestowing the “gifted” label isn’t a helpful response to this situation, argue the authors. Instead, they suggest doing a better job with differentiation:

• Identify specific instances where students’ academic needs aren’t being met. Teachers might ask themselves, “Who is not being challenged in my math classroom today?” or “Which students won’t learn anything new from next year’s science curriculum?”
• Create or locate appropriate interventions to meet those needs.

These might include allowing early entrance to kindergarten, double-promoting students, and helping teachers provide challenging material for students who are ahead at certain points in the curriculum. 

On a related note, the authors say, “One recent study found that, across the United States, 95 percent of kindergarteners tested in the fall demonstrated mastery of counting up to 10, identifying one-digit numbers, and recognizing geometric shapes. Despite this widespread level of proficiency, teachers reported spending an average of 12.7 days per month reteaching this content, a finding negatively associated with student learning.”

“Gifted Ed. Is Crucial, But the Label Isn’t” by Scott Peters, Scott Barry Kaufman, Michael Matthews, Matthew McBee, and Betsy McCoach in Education Week, April 16, 2014 (Vol. 33, #28, p. 40, 34), www.edweek.org; Peters can be reached at peterss@uww.edu. 

From the Marshall Memo #533