Thomas Jefferson viewed public education as a chance to create an educated democracy. He felt a basic grammar school system would be educators chance to "rake the gems from the rubbish" in order to create a meritocracy in the U.S.
My Educational History and Sociology homework this week shook out to this. Enjoy.
(Click on the floaty ballons to read the timeline entries. Move the sliders to the right and left to zoom into a time period.)
As with most controversies in public education, gifted education has experienced shifts in official policy treatment and public opinion over time. In nearly 150 years of treatment, gifted education in the United States has alternately languished in the backwaters of public opinion and federal funding and been on the cutting edge of national crisis. A lack of basic understanding of giftedness and the gifted student and an inordinate cultural bias against the intellectual elite continues to keep gifted education in the periphery of education. Without advocacy, giftedness will continue to be misunderstood and underserved.
Context
As with most of our social sciences, education, a branch of psychology, came out of the flowering of rational thought that occurred in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, this was also the height of colonialism as the United States and Great Britain dominated the world and exploited the people and resources of it. Psychology and anthropology were, at the time pseudo-sciences, hardly more than philosophies, which sought to justify the natural, and therefore justified dominance, of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. It is not surprising, therefore, that much of the early work in intelligence found that males of WASP background were the only gifted worth mentioning. (NAGC, 2008)
The first empirical method of measuring intelligence came when Lewis Terman published the Stanford-Binet IQ test in 1916. This test was used to route doughboys, after the onset of World War I in 1917, into “alpha” and “beta” groups. (NAGC, 2008) The test seemed to measure an individual’s abilities through the lens of cultural bias rather than an individual’s capabilities, however.
While some effort had been made to establish gifted education in cities such as St. Louis, New York, San Diego and Chicago, the first real national-level interest in gifted education came in 1954 with the formation of the National Association of Gifted Children in Washington D.C (Jolly, 2009, NAGC, 2008). In their 2010 position paper, the NAGC says:
Policy makers should be aware that the gifted persons described here will comprise a large proportion of the leadership of the next generation in the arts, sciences, letters, politics, etc. If we provide this group with a mediocre education we doom ourselves to a mediocre society a generation forward. Educators know how to provide an excellent education for these students, but it will not happen by accident or benign neglect.- (NAGC Gifted Terminology Task Force, 2010)
The NAGC still serves as an advocacy and support group and a clearinghouse of information on the education of gifted and talented children.
The 1950’s were a golden age in gifted education as the United States sought to compete with the Soviet Union in the arms and space races. In her report on the urban gifted programs, VanTassel-Baska says, “the launch of Sputnik translated to a veritable windfall for gifted education.” (VanTassel-Baska, 2010, p. 39) As America closed the technology gap and the Civil Rights Era and Brown v The Board of Education came to the forefront, the biases of gifted education and intelligence tests put gifted education onto the back burner and it wasn’t until the federally published Marland Report of 1972 that the term “gifted and talented” was even officially defined. (NAGC, 2008)
The Reagan Revolution of the 1980’s saw the public education system come under fire in the interests of privatization. A Nation at Risk was published criticizing public schools for their lack of academic rigor and their emphasis of egalitarianism over excellence in education for gifted students. The funding cuts and promotion of charter schools and voucher systems did nothing to address the lack of options for gifted students in already underrepresented communities of girls, poor and minority students. (Jolly, 2009)
In 1988 Congress passed the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act is passed to provide special competitive grants to fund gifted programs on a state level. Two years later, in 1990, an extension of this program opened up the National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented in four college campuses across the nation. This created a brief flowering of gifted programs across the nation. No Child Left Behind in 2002 quashed whatever gains gifted education had made, however, when the buzz word became “proficiency” rather than “excellence.” Ironically, NCLB specifically addresses the special needs of gifted and talented students, expands the Javits act and redefines giftedness as:
Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.- (NAGC, 2008)
However, gifted education remains neglected as state and local school systems struggle to meet the other requirements of NCLB.
Controversy: Equity vs. Excellence
Should resources be poured into making sure that all students have an equal chance at the same education or should resources be focused into helping the best and the brightest be all that they can be? This dilemma plagues the United States and its educational system and seems so deeply entrenched that overcoming its polarity seems unimaginable. Many education specialists point toward the prosocial effects of egalitarianism and “mixed” classrooms with students of various levels of ability and capability working together. Carol Ann Tomlinson, an expert on gifted students, says that the use of mixed classroom causes issues due to the “inordinate use of [gifted] learners as ‘junior teachers’” in scaffolding scenarios. She says that teachers need to “move away from cooperative learning as a ‘savior’ strategy.” (Tomlinson, 1995)
Many teachers would resent the implication that they take advantage of certain students but only a misunderstanding of what it means to be gifted could account for the continued push toward heterogeneous classrooms despite research which clearly shows that acceleration and pull-out strategies are optimal for gifted students. (Cloud, Badowski, Rubiner, & Scully, 2004) Only a continued fear of intellectual elitism could account for the ubiquitous lack of service for gifted students in our nation. As John Cloud writes in Time:
“Americans don’t seem to have any problem with teenagers who show genius in sports (LeBron James) or entertainment (Hilary Duff). But we have a deeply ambivalent relationship with intellectually gifted kids.”
Educators couch their concerns in terms of worry over the emotional and social well-being of a gifted student who might be stigmatized by their label or skipped ahead into classes beyond their maturity level, statistics, however, show that acceleration does not have lasting negative effects on students. (Jolly, 2009) Reporting done in Time magazine explores the controversy surrounding acceleration has found that patently untrue according to all research dating back to the 1960’s. (Cloud, Badowski, Rubiner, & Scully, 2004)
Another aspect of the equity vs. excellence dilemma is the emphasis on the social and emotional learning of middle school kids. Due to the emphasis on adolescent emotional health in middle school curriculum in light of student assimilation into a “learning community,” educators need to be made aware of the special needs of gifted students, particularly girls and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. These students are often at risk of being targeted by peer pressure in a different way than other students. Tomlinson describes the tension between the philosophy of middle school education and the philosophy of gifted education as a difficulty with “fostering development of high-end excellence” at the same time as it provides access to education for all learners. She proposes that educators can solve this problem by planning “for both personal excellence and equity of access to advancement for all learners who are at risk, including those who are gifted.” (Tomlinson, 1995)
Tomlinson claims that there is a basic problem about what constitutes appropriate middle school curricula. She says that the entire thirty year history of middle school has been one placing importance on school environment as a safe area for social and emotional development and that, as a result, the importance of academic achievement has been lessened. Her suggestions for alleviating this issue can be boiled down to refusing to buy into “theories that present middle school students as incapable of high level thought and complex learning” and using “best practice” curricula and methodology for all students. (Tomlinson, 1995)
Some educators believe that after a child enters high school the availability of honors and A.P. courses negate the need for pull-out services. Berger describes this period as a very critical time for gifted students who often need more intensive counseling and career development. She says that counseling should ensure that “students learn that college planning is part of life career development” and that “it need not be a finite even that begins and ends mysteriously or arbitrarily.” (Berger, College Planning for Gifted and Talented Youth, 1989) She contends that a gifted student may more keenly feel the import of the transition from high school to college and will continue to need extra emotional and social support in order to make that transition smoothly.
Because of its roots in racism, even modern intelligence testing and screening for gifted programs get a bad rap from those vigilant for the equity of today’s public school system. Frank Yekovich’s 1994 review of the literature discusses the problems with both the definition of intelligence and the application of intelligence tests. He says that IQ tests assess a student’s abilities but are used to determine a student’s capabilities. This problem is illustrated in “the fact that minority groups are overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs.” Yekovich uses the cognitive psychology rubric to understand the meaning of intelligence and giftedness. With the current advances in brain imagery technology, however, we know that the gifted brain is structurally different from brains that test at a standard or average intelligence regardless of cultural background (Sousa, 2009), and the federal government’s broader definition of gifted and talented counteracts any lingering cultural bias that straight IQ testing might perpetuate.
Another very common misconception is that gifted students will do well in school with or without special services or that heaping them up with “enrichment” materials (ie, extra work) will substitute for acceleration or differentiation. VanTassel-Baska explains that in a 1950’s era study of gifted students, “researchers found that students with IQ 148+ were the most dissatisfied with their school situations and thus the most in need of special services.” (VanTassel-Baska, 2010, p. 23) Another study showed that underserved gifted students were just as likely to drop out of school after the 8th grade as their average counterparts. (ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children, 1990)
Future Leaders of America
The vast majority of high achieving individuals in any culture most likely start as gifted kids. VanTassel-Baska confidently explains:
“The Greeks and Romans recognized the value of talent, as did the tribes of the Bible, responding to the parables told by Jesus. The Chinese Dynasties and Confucius as a scholar saw value in educating those from all social strata according to their talents. Cultures embraced the recognition and development of giftedness as a way to determine potential contributors to a society- as leaders, even philosopher kings in Plato’s imagined world, or guildsmen, or clerics.” (VanTassel-Baska, 2010, p. 19)
Is our nation to be left off the lists off all-time greats because of our refusal to recognize the special needs of gifted students?
Currently the United States Department of Education is attempting to promote STEM education; Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It has become abundantly clear that the U.S. is falling behind our international counterparts in these areas and, just like in the post Sputnik era of the 1950’s, funding is being channeled to promote accelerated and differentiated programs for gifted students. (Jolly, 2009) Jennifer Jolly, expert on the history of gifted education says, “Gifted and talented students become a national priority when excellence is sought and a critical need is perceived.” (Jolly, 2009, p. 36 & 37) In this time of national priority how will educators choose to channel funding for gifted students? What services do those students most need?
Sandra Berger describes the components of developing an effective Gifted program within a school or school district in her 1991 piece written published in the ERIC Digest. She describes “program” as “part of the mainstream of education [which] doesn’t rise and fall with public opinions. It is a comprehensive, sequential system for educating students with identifiable needs; it is often designed by a curriculum committee; and it is supported by a district or school budget.” A program is something that is instituted as opposed to a “provision” which is simply an accommodation which is made for one student or a group of students on an as needed basis. “Teaching strategies,” she says, “may change, but the question of whether or not [a program] should be part of the curriculum is never raised.” (Berger, Developing Programs for Students of High Ability, 1991)
The old question of equality vs egalitarianism still persist when school systems have trouble identifying gifted students and question the cultural relevancy of giftedness indicators. Although the national definition via the Javits Act is clear, school districts still clearly underserve their gifted population. According to the NAGC, 10%-15% of any given student population should fall under the “gifted and talented” rubric. (NAGC Gifted Terminology Task Force, 2010) Most school districts fall well below that level.
The National Association of Gifted Children says that, “exceptionally capable adults are among those most likely to contribute to the advancement of a society and its scientific, humanistic and social goals.” For public opinion and government policy to fall in line with the needs of gifted students, the public must be made aware of the implications of underserving the gifted population and the real meaning of the term “giftedness.” For this to happen, classroom teachers, administrators and government policy makers must be made aware of the differences of the gifted child and their special needs. It falls to those who are aware to become advocates of gifted education or our best and brightest, our nation’s real future, will be lost.
Timeline of Major Events Adapted from (NAGC, 2008)
• 1868- School superintendent William Torrey Harris institutes a gifted education program in St. Louis schools.
• 1869- Francis Galton publishes Hereditary Genius making the case for intelligence being the result of heredity and natural selection.
• 1901- The first school for the gifted opens up in Worcester, Massachusetts.
• 1916- Lewis Terman publishes the Stanford-Binet intelligence test.
• 1917- The U.S. Army institutes IQ testing to place soldiers.
• 1921- Lewis Terman begins a longitudinal study of 1500 gifted students.
• 1922- Leta S. Hollingworth begins the Special Opportunity Class in New York City
• 1925- Lews Terman publishes Genetic Studies of Genius attempting to define identifiable attributes of gifted students.
• 1926- Leta S. Hollingworth publishes first text on gifted education Gifted Child: Their Nature and Nurture
• 1936- Leta S. Hollingworth establishes the Speyer school for the gifted in New York City
• 1954- The National Association of Gifted Children is founded
• 1957- The Soviet Union launches Sputnik into orbit causing a national scramble to fund into the identification and development of gifted students who would profit from STEM education.
• 1958- National Defense Education Act is the first big federal effort to promote gifted education.
• 1972- The Marland Report is published by the federal government defining what it is to be gifted and talented.
• 1974- The Office of the Gifted and Talented is given official status within the U.S. Office of Education.
• 1983- The federal report A Nation At Risk includes promotion of gifted curriculum
• 1988- Congress passes the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act which provides competitive grant monies for states to promote gifted programs.
• 1990- National Research Centers on the Gifted and Talented are opened in University of Connecticut, University of Virginia, Yale University and Northwestern University for the purposes of studying gifted children, developing gifted curriculum and educating teachers and administrators.
• 1993- National Excellence: The Case for Developing America’s Talent report is published by the federal government saying that the best and brightest are being neglected by America’s public school system.
• 2002- No Child Left Behind is passed and includes an expanded version of the Javits program and the definition of g/t students is modified to: Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.
• 2004- A Nation Decieved: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students is published criticizing the failure of public schools to address the needs of the gifted.
Works Cited
Berger, S. L. (1989). College Planning for Gifted and Talented Youth. Reston, VA: The Council for Exceptional Children.
Berger, S. L. (1991). Developing Programs for Students of High Ability. Washington DC: National Association for Gifted Children.
Cloud, J., Badowski, C., Rubiner, B., & Scully, S. (2004). Saving the Smart Kids. Time, pp. 56-61.
ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children. (1990). Giftedness And The Gifted: What's It All About? Eric Digests.
Jolly, J. L. (2009). A Resuscitation of Gifted Education. American Educational History Journal, 37-52.
NAGC. (2008). The History of Gifted and Talented Education. Retrieved from National Association for Gifted Children: http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=607
NAGC Gifted Terminology Task Force. (2010, March). Rediefining Giftedness for a New Century: Shifting the Paradigm. Retrieved from National Association for Gifted Children: http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=607
Sousa, D. A. (2009). How the Gifted Brain Learns. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.
Tomlinson, C. A. (1995). Gifted Learners and the Middle School: Problem or Promise. National Association for Gifted Children.
VanTassel-Baska, J. (2010). The History of Urban Gifted Education. Gifted Child Today, 18-27.
Yekovich, F. R. (1994, April). Current Issues in Research on Intelligence. Retrieved from ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation: http://202.198.141.51/upload/soft/0-article/+020/20022.pdf
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