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Board of Curiosities

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Tap a real science mystery and become the scientist — the screen time that gets kids off the screen and out into the real world. No chatbot, free.

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Math Tasks – great math tasks for your classroom

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Thanks to Brian from Boyertown for sharing via his newsletter!

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What’s Going on With Gifted Education? - UConn Today

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UConn researchers help steer the field in new publication

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Addressing Work Refusal in the Classroom

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As educators grapple with the silent protest of student work refusal, research illuminates the underlying causes—and possible solutions.

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Gail Post, PhD: A Psychologist's Perspective

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Please Stop Shaming Gifted Children and Their Families

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Gifted terminology is the problem, not the child or their parents

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At Monocacy Middle School in Frederick, Maryland, students in Allison Marsh's 8th grade English language arts class are preparing to analyze informational articles about technology and social media. In order to help her students be successful in the task, Marsh first wants them to connect their prior knowledge to new content so they can properly engage with the big essential question of the unit: "How do the challenges you face today shape your future?" To make these connections visible, Marsh uses an activity called hexagonal thinking.

Students get into groups of four with one set of hexagon-shaped cards per group. Today, they were given a starting card with the the topic of social media on it. Additional cards containing key terms from the text-parent concern, technology, and addiction, for example-were dealt out. Each student has an opportunity to match the edge of one of their cards to the starting card in the center of the table. Students may also link to cards other students have put down, or even match up two edges at once, ultimately creating a web of related terms that represents their thinking. As they place each card, they offer a rationale for why they see a connection.

Explains Marsh, "You can't just look at a kid and know how they think or what they understand about something. So we have to be explicit using strategies to glean what they already know and what they can bring to the activity."

Learning Science Partners' Jim Heal describes why this activity is so effective. " Schema is a term that describes the way that we organize information in our minds," he explains. "As students learn a new topic, they move away from thinking of ideas as isolated facts and instead consider them in relationship to one another."

By asking students to participate in the hexagonal thinking activity, the teacher is able to make the students' interconnected networks of ideas explicit. And when the ideas are literally laid out on the table, the teacher also has a chance to push for further rationalization, which makes connections stronger, and lets her address any misconceptions before students engage in the analysis.

This video is part of our How Learning Happens series, which explores teaching practices grounded in the science of learning and human development.

Responses are generated by artificial intelligence. AI can make mistakes.

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Activating Prior Knowledge With Hexagonal Thinking

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By creating a visual web of knowledge, students can demonstrate what connections they have already made about a topic, and where they might need additional clarification and support.

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A study followed 'gifted' kids for over 50 years. Here's what we've learned about them.

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A 0-plus year study on gifted children has found that there are some thing that we got wrong about them. A big takeaway is that gifted kids can't just excel on their own, they need guidance from parents and teachers to reach their full potential;.

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Printable List of Executive Functioning Accommodations for an IEP or 504 Plan

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If your child is struggling with executive function disorder, here are some accommodation and strategies to add to your IEP or 504 plan.

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Why Do Gifted Students Struggle in School? | Davidson Academy

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If you’re thinking, “my child is smart but not doing well in school”, learn common reasons why and how parents and teachers can better support gifted learners.

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The Importance of Intellectual Peers for Gifted Students

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This blog explains why gifted students need intellectual peers for deeper learning, motivation, and belonging.

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Ending gifted education hurts equity. True fairness means expanding opportunity and access, not removing it, so every child’s potential, gifted or not, can thrive.

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NAEP scores show top students are struggling, too

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Amid the worst scores in history, we must act to help our lowest-performing students. But don’t let that focus lead to neglect at the top, where students are also in trouble. Both-and, not either-or.

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The smartest kids should never hear this phrase from their parents, according to experts - Metabolic

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This is the one common phrase that can unintentionally harm a gifted child’s confidence and creativity. Discover what to say instead.

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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T Authored by: Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge he following article expands on highlights and insights from one of our Expert Series events, which are exclusive for  Young Scholars  and their parents. The Role of Nervous System Dysregulation
Summary

Gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) kids are bright, curious, and full of potential-but when it comes to executive functioning and future thinking, they often struggle. They may have big ideas but get stuck in the details, making it tough to plan ahead, follow through, and manage time effectively. Without these essential skills, even the most capable kids can feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or paralyzed when faced with complex tasks.
Teaching Future Thinking
That's because executive functioning isn't just about attention-it's about planning, organizing, prioritizing, and self-regulating. And when a child's nervous system is dysregulated, these skills take a major hit.

Dysregulation happens when a child is overstimulated or under stimulated, making it difficult to focus, shift between tasks, or manage emotions. When a child is stuck in fight, flight, or freeze mode, the brain isn't available for higher-level thinking, like planning and problem-solving.

That's why regulation must come first. Teaching kids simple nervous system regulation techniques-like movement breaks, deep breathing, or sensory strategies-helps create the foundation for stronger executive functioning and future thinking skills.
Teach Future Thinking: A Simple Strategy
One of the biggest challenges for 2e kids is future thinking-the ability to anticipate challenges, plan for next steps, and see the long-term impact of their choices. They may struggle to connect today's actions to future success or break big goals into smaller, manageable steps.

The key is teaching them to "think ahead" by working backward. When kids learn to visualize success and map out the steps to reach it, they feel more confident, less overwhelmed, and better equipped to manage their time and responsibilities.

General Tips

Ask your child: "What would future you want?

This helps them visualize the outcome they want to achieve.

Work backward to plan the steps:

Identify the last step they need to take.

Break it down into milestones that lead up to it.

Create a timeline or checklist to track progress.

This simple shift helps kids go from feeling stuck to knowing exactly what to do next.

Resources
Additional Resources:
Want More Strategies?

Future thinking is just one piece of executive functioning! Get my free 2e Executive Functioning Playbook for step-by-step tools to help your child stay on track, get organized, and think ahead. 2E Executive Functioning Playbook - Dr. Roseann.

You've got this, and I'm here to help!
Speaker Bio:

2e and Executive Functioning
224: Gifted and Struggling: Executive Functioning in Twice Exceptional (2E) Students - Dr. Roseann

Gifted and ADHD
132: Gifted and ADHD with Karen - Dr. Roseann
Permission Statement
Executive Functioning Episodes
Executive Functioning Archives - Dr. Roseann
More Resources:
With three decades of experience, Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge has become a trusted leader in children's mental health, helping families overcome emotional and behavioral hurdles. Specializing in nervous system dysregulation, she provides science-backed tools to support parents of uniquely wired children dealing with under- and overstimulation of the nervous system: ADHD, anxiety, OCD, mood issues, PANS/PANDAS, etc. Her C.A.L.M.S. Dysregulation Protocol™ offers simple steps to build calm, balanced homes.

A three-time bestselling author and top 1% podcaster, Dr. Roseann's groundbreaking work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, and Parents Magazine. Known for her compassionate approach, she empowers parents with actionable solutions to help their children succeed emotionally, behaviorally, and academically. Dr. Roseann is passionate about showing families how to unlock their child's potential through nervous system regulation and positive, practical support.

This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute's programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.

Guiding Gifted - A monthly newsletter from the Davidson Institute for those who work with or have a gifted or twice-exceptional child in their family.

Davidson Gifted Perspectives - A video series that examines several different gifted-related issues and viewpoints.

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Tips for Parents: The Gifted Brain: Strengthening Executive Functioning and Future Thinking - Davidson Institute

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The following article expands on highlights and insights from one of our Expert Series events, which are exclusive for Young Scholars and their parents.

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Teaching Young Students How to Overcome Cognitive Overload

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Teachers can help students develop the metacognitive skills to avoid becoming overwhelmed by school demands.

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About a year ago, I presented a workshop to my fellow teacher candidates on supporting gifted learners. I brought a bit of a unique perspective - I was a gifted learner, moved to a congregated class at the beginning of grade three. The congregated program had a massive impact on me. I went from crying about having to go to school to embracing the new challenges presented to me as my needs were properly accommodated.

Following the workshop, I summarized my research and personal experiences to create this fact sheet. I shared it on Twitter a while back, but in case you missed it, here it is again!

I shared some great resources for learning more in this infographic, here are the direct links. I encourage you to check them out to learn more about specific strategies and explore the research behind supporting gifted students.

What strategies do you find effective for supporting gifted students? Comment them below and share the learning! 😊

About a year ago, I presented a workshop to my fellow teacher candidates on supporting gifted learners. I brought a bit of a unique perspective - I was a gifted learner, moved to a congregated class at the beginning of grade three. The congregated program had a massive impact on me. I went from crying about having to go to school to embracing the new challenges presented to me as my needs were properly accommodated.

Following the workshop, I summarized my research and personal experiences to create this fact sheet. I shared it on Twitter a while back, but in case you missed it, here it is again!

I shared some great resources for learning more in this infographic, here are the direct links. I encourage you to check them out to learn more about specific strategies and explore the research behind supporting gifted students.

What strategies do you find effective for supporting gifted students? Comment them below and share the learning! 😊

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Supporting Gifted Learners Fact Sheet | Ms Mills Teaches

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About a year ago, I presented a workshop to my fellow teacher candidates on supporting gifted learners. I brought a bit of a unique perspective - I was a gifted learner, moved to a congregated class at the beginning of grade three. The congregated program had a massive impact on me.

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Gail Post, PhD: A Psychologist's Perspective

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Buyer Beware: How to Navigate the Maze of Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Resources

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When to trust claims of expertise... and when to run the other way.

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Mensa for Kids' TED Connections are short, easy to use guides that help teachers, parents and youth use TED talks in a classroom or home setting.

Rather than a lesson plan format, they have a list of discussion questions, all at higher levels of thinking. We include a variety of levels of questions and extension opportunities so that the TED Connections can be used by students at a wide range of grade levels. Feel free to select those questions and activities that will work best for the student(s) you are working with.

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Mensa for Kids' TED Connections are short, easy to use guides that help teachers, parents and youth use TED talks in a classroom or home setting. Rather than a lesson plan format, they have a list of discussion questions, all at higher levels of thinking.

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When The Going Gets Tough ... Let Kids Fail?

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Some parents will do anything to help their kids get ahead, but some experts say we should let them fail so they can be prepared for the real world. Host Michel Martin speaks with Ana Homayoun, author of The Myth of the Perfect Girl, and parents Glenn Ivey and Dani Tucker.

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Neuroscience of Giftedness: Physiology of the Brain

by Sharon Duncan, Corin Goodwin, Joanna Haase, Ph.D, MFT, and Sarah Wilson
A collaboration of GHF: Gifted Homeschoolers Forum and GRO: Gifted Research and Outreach

Confusion abounds over the many connotations of the term "gifted." Is it an educational label? A psychological label? Does it have a neurological basis? In fact, each of those areas of study encompass distinct paradigms and implications for the definition of this single word.

The world of education often uses labels to qualify for services that will allow the individual child to perform adequately in the classroom. This practical approach to giftedness in the typical school setting addresses perceived needs and supports the child in fitting into that particular environment.

In psychology, because giftedness isn't included in the DSM V, it is often overlooked as an area of potential exploration, overshadowed by the focus on pathologies. While giftedness has become increasingly acknowledged in the field of psychology, identification relies largely on checklists and a variety of assessment tools, which are continually revised to reflect the most current understanding of gifted characteristics. Instead, the identification of giftedness should be based on a combination of observation, performance, and assessment tools. The many crossovers between giftedness as it is understood behaviorally, and other diagnoses often leads to mislabeling and under-identification.

One way in which we may be able to find clarity across disciplines is in the examination of how the physiology of a gifted brain differs from a "neurotypical" brain. As our ability to observe brain function directly through imaging or other methods increases, the more we learn about what giftedness looks like at its root. This leads to the question: Are there common neurological features which lead to behaviors (psychology/psychiatry) that are addressed in the educational realm?
Existing literature suggests that, indeed, the gifted brain is different than a neurotypical brain, and we will address these differences and their potential implications in a series of short articles.
Neuroscience of Giftedness: Physiology of the Brain

Increased Brain Areas Associated with Emotional Processing

Gifted Research and Outreach (GRO) is a non-profit corporation whose mission is to promote a comprehensive and accurate understanding of giftedness through research and outreach. GRO is committed to researching the physiology of giftedness; educating medical, psychological, and teaching professionals about the physical and psychological impacts of giftedness; and cultivating a national outreach campaign to correct myths and inspire social change, so that the needs of gifted individuals may be openly discussed.

GHF envisions a world where all children are understood and supported in their strengths and challenges, and families are respected in their educational approaches. GHF supports, educates and advocates for gifted and twice-exceptional children, their families, and the professionals who serve them, as they pursue alternative, lifelong educational paths.
GRO and GHF have partnered on this project to spread the word about the neuroscience of giftedness to the gifted community, medical and educational professionals, and other service providers. Greater understanding will lead to a better quality of life for our children, their families, and society as a whole.

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Neuroscience of Giftedness: Physiology of the Brain

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Neuroscience of Giftedness: Physiology of the Brain by Sharon Duncan, Corin Goodwin, Joanna Haase, Ph.D, MFT, and Sarah Wilson A collaboration of GHF: Gifted Homeschoolers Forum and GRO: Gifted Research and Outreach Confusion abounds over the many connotations of the term "gifted." Is it an educational label? A psychological label?

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Untangling Giftedness: IQ Tests, Labels, and What It All Means

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Exploring the history, scoring, and shifting definitions behind levels of giftedness

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Think Again: Are Education Programs for High Achievers Inherently Inequitable?

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This brief challenges the notion that marginalized students of high ability are harmed by advanced education, with implications for better screening measures and expansion of programs.

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Check out the "diamond" model that is intentional with Tiers to support high-level learners! Think about how this relates to your MTSS framework.

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Colorado school districts are working on new ways to find gifted students from all backgrounds

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White students and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds still make up the vast majority of students in gifted programs. Districts are working to identify more students. In some districts that includes looking at language learning.

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5 Ways to Support Neurodivergent Students

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An academic coach for neurodivergent students shares how to help neurodivergent students reach their potential throughout the school year.

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28 Teacher-Tested, Ready-to-Use Academic Sponge Activities

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When a lesson doesn’t go to plan, these activities can help soak up class time and keep learning on track.

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Nearly all aspects of America's schools are built upon age-based grade levels and corresponding grade-level expectations: standards, instruction, curriculum, and assessment, among others. This reinforces the implicit message that performing on grade level is the primary purpose of schooling. Yet it also ignores an important question: How many students already perform one or more years above grade level on their first day of school?

The answer to this question has profound implications for American education policy and for the organization of schools. If a mere 2 percent of students perform above grade level, for example, the present obsession with grade-level proficiency might make sense. But what if it were a far larger proportion? If one in every five students has surpassed that criterion before the school year even starts, policymakers would need to re-think the merits of an age-based, grade-level focus.

In a recent policy brief, four colleagues addressed this question and found that very large percentages of students (between 15 percent and 45 percent) are performing above grade level-and that these percentages represent staggeringly large numbers of students. In California alone, for example, this group comprises more than 1.4 million pupils.

To reach these conclusions, we examined five assessment data sets. We selected data from the Common Core-aligned but nonadaptive version of the Smarter Balanced assessment from Wisconsin; a computer-adaptive version of the Smarter Balanced assessment from California; the partially Common Core-aligned Florida Standards Assessment; multistate data from the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress; and nationally representative data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This gave us data for three states-California, Wisconsin, and Florida-as well as information on a nationally representative sample of students in grades 4, 8, and 12.

Five different data sets from five distinct assessment administrations provide consistent evidence that very large percentages of students perform above grade level. Based on the Wisconsin and California Smarter Balanced, Florida FSA, and multistate MAP data, we estimate that 20-40 percent of elementary and middle school students perform at least one grade level above their current grade in reading, with 11-30 percent scoring at least one grade level above in math.

Moreover, we also found large percentages of students performing well above grade level-more than one grade level ahead. Using MAP data, we estimate that 8-10 percent of Grade 4 students perform at the Grade 8 level in reading/English/language arts, with 2-5 percent scoring at similar levels in math. Relying specifically on the MAP data, one out of every ten fifth-graders is performing at the high school level in reading, and nearly one child in forty at this age is performing at the high school level in mathematics. Because of the MAP test's computer-adaptive format and high measurement ceiling, these results cannot be explained away by the correction that commonly applies to pencil-and-paper grade-level achievement tests. On the latter tests, a fifth-grader with a ninth-grade-level equivalent score amounts to a ninth-grader's completing a fifth-grade test. By contrast, a MAP test score that is equivalent to ninth-grade performance is in fact based on ninth-grade content knowledge and skills.

Converting these percentages to numbers of children provides a sobering picture of the number of students who are not well served under the current grade-based educational paradigm. In Wisconsin alone, somewhere between 278,000 and 330,000 public-school students are performing more than a full grade above where they are placed in school. And as mentioned above, in the much larger state of California, that number is between 1.4 million and 2 million students.

Federal and state education policies are largely irrelevant for this huge number of students. Getting kids to grade-level proficiency has been a focus of U.S. education policy and practice for well over a decade. Yet the U.S. likely wastes tens of billions of dollars each year in efforts to teach students content they already know.

This structure centered on age-based grade levels, therefore, needs serious rethinking. One option is whole-grade or single-subject acceleration. Indeed, this is consistent with the literature, which has documented uniformly positive benefits when academic acceleration is implemented thoughtfully. Academic acceleration is particularly beneficial for students pursuing professional careers that require substantial academic preparation and credentialing, a point that has been recognized for more than eighty years. Acceleration would also reduce the difficulty of differentiated instruction because students within a given classroom are selected to be far more homogeneous in ability and prior knowledge than they are in the traditional system.

Based on all of this, our initial question-How many students are learning above grade level?-needs to be extended. The more important questions may be:

1. How should we reorganize our schools, now that we know that large numbers of these students exist?

2. How can we best meet these students' learning needs, if they already have mastered much of the year's content before the year has even started?

3. How can schools balance the potential for excellence against the need to achieve basic proficiency, when the variation in student achievement within classrooms and schools is so vast?

The current K-12 education system essentially ignores the learning needs of a huge percentage of its students. Knowing this, twenty years from now we may look back and wonder why we kept using age-based grade levels to organize K-12 education for so long.
Jonathan Plucker is Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development at Johns Hopkins University, Matthew Makel is Director of Research at the Duke University Talent Identification Program, Karen Rambo-Hernandez is Assistant Professor at West Virginia University, Michael Matthews is Professor of Education at University of North Carolina-Charlotte, and Scott Peters is Associate Professor of Education at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

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Stop wasting money teaching millions of students content they already know

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Nearly all aspects of America's schools are built upon age-based grade levels and corresponding grade-level expectations: standards, instruction, curriculum, and assessment, among others. This reinforces the implicit message that performing on grade level is the primary purpose of schooling.

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Neurodivergent Kids Flourish When They're Taught How Their Brains Work

When teachers and parents talk to kids about having ADHD, autism or learning disabilities, they set them up for success

By Jerome Schultz

This piece is part of Scientific American's column The Science of Parenting. For more, go here.
Whether a child has ADHD, a learning disability or is autistic, parents of kids with special needs yearn to know what they can do to help. As a pediatric neuropsychologist and a former special-education teacher with about 50 years of experience, I've been approached time and again by parents asking: "How can I help my child make friends?" "What can I do to make sure my child has the skills to be independent?" "How can I boost my child's self-confidence?" They want to know the key to helping their kids.

There is a simple and effective answer: When kids have a better understanding of the condition that affects their learning, they tend to have a better self-concept, and they are more likely to feel empowered and motivated to self-advocate. These keys unlock a child's potential, resulting in better academic performance and better mental health.

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Many years ago, when I was on the board of the Massachusetts Learning Disability Association, I was the emcee for a panel of six high-school students with learning disabilities at a conference attended by parents and their kids. During the discussion, I asked the panel: "How would you describe your learning disability, and how does it affect you in school or in your life?"

Half of the kids responded something like this: "Well, I've always been a bad reader, and writing is the thing I hate most about school. I don't really know why school is so hard; I think it's just how my brain is wired. I work really hard, but I guess I just wasn't cut out to be a student. Thank goodness I like art. At least I'm good at something."

The other three kids responded along these lines: "I have learning disability called dyslexia. For me that means that I can't always make sense of the words that I'm reading, so it takes me longer than other kids to do my schoolwork. And I have difficulty writing in a way that's organized or fluent. I think I'm a pretty smart kid, but sometimes it's hard to communicate that in my writing. I know what I need to do to get more out of my reading assignments, take tests better and write papers that make sense. It's not easy, but I now know that school is something I can master."

I then asked the kids "Who helped you along the way, and what did they say or do that made a difference in your life?" It quickly became clear that, for the self-assured students, either a parent or a teacher had helped them understand their learning challenges.

In my experience as a consultant and teacher-trainer in hundreds of schools, I've seen how students in schools that intentionally teach kids about their learning disability, ADHD or autism see greater success than those in programs that do not have this goal, or those where this kind of instruction is left to chance. Parents who understand that self-knowledge leads to better self-advocacy and greater confidence also teach their kids about the condition that makes school challenging, and what they can do about it.

Over the years, I've worked with thousands learning disabled students and their teachers. I've observed that when enlightened educators, parents or therapists help kids understand the nature and effects of their condition on thinking and learning, this has resulted in a sense of competence and increased confidence-traits these students carried with them as they encountered (and sought out) more challenging academic tasks. I have seen that when kids understand how and why specialized learning strategies work, they became more invested in their own education, and- wait for it- they experience more success.

They are also more likely to be role models for other kids with learning disabilities. For example, at the conference the student panelists encouraged parents and kids in the audience not to be ashamed or embarrassed in finding out they had a learning disability, but to be empowered by knowing what works and why. The impact seemed immediate. As the event was ending, many kids in the audience came forward to ask if they could be on the panel at a future event.

Having the "talk" with kids can be anxiety-producing for both parents and children. If you want to have this discussion with your child about their learning disability, timing is key. Ideally, have this conversation after a professional evaluation. This provides a framework and reassurance that your concerns are valid. I would suggest starting with observations: "I've noticed you sometimes struggle with reading. Can we talk about ways to make it easier for you?" Remember to frame the issue in a positive light: "Everyone learns differently. Some people learn best by seeing, while others need to hear things explained. You might learn best in a way that's different from other kids."

When explaining a new diagnosis, use age-appropriate language. For young children, you can say something like, "Some brains learn a little differently than others, and sometimes this makes it hard to learn new things. Your teachers might know special ways to help you learn better and have more success; let's check with them." Focus on improving the process of learning more than the product: "It's kind of like soccer; the more you practice the correct way to dribble, the better you get." As kids mature, gradually introduce the terms "learning disability" or "ADHD" or other diagnostic labels and explain these labels in a positive light. Remember that these diagnoses will be in their IEP (individualized education plan or program), should they have one, and as kids get older they'll be increasingly involved in creating their own educational plans.

For all ages, focus on strengths: "You're incredibly creative, but reading or writing may not be the only way to show what you know. Maybe audiobooks or visual aids can help with reading, or software can help you write those excellent thoughts you have."

Like many kids with ADHD or a learning disability, your child may have developed a negative assessment of themselves, saying things such as "I'm dumb" or "I'm broken." And during the talk, you can address these misconceptions by using the results of evaluations to help make your point. "Remember that Dr. S said you were really great with tasks that allowed you to see or touch, like puzzles? He said you did so well, it's kind of your superpower. Matching pictures to things that you read will help you understand the words or main ideas better. Your teachers know how to do that, and it seems to be helping. It may just take some time."

Throughout, practice patience and encourage questions and concerns. Let them know it's okay to feel frustrated sometimes. Frustration can lead to solutions. This will likely be one of multiple conversations as your child's understanding evolves (as they get older and wiser). One of those conversations should be with the doctor or other expert who did the evaluation. That person can reinforce what you've said by explaining the child's strengths to them and teaching them strategies that lead to greater success. You might also want to invite that clinician to talk to the child's teachers, so that you all share a common understanding and vocabulary about the condition. Work with teachers and counselors to develop learning strategies and accommodations at school that help a child develop self-understanding, competence and confidence. Encourage educators to use a "language of understanding" about your child's condition.

At home, you can share books, websites or videos explaining learning styles and ADHD. Expose your kids to other kids who deal successfully with this challenge. By connecting with support groups, parents and children with learning disability or ADHD, can learn from shared experiences.

Ultimately, be patient and understanding, as this is a lifelong journey. Along the way, you can focus on your child's progress, rather than on perfection. All of this will help to empower kids with special needs and set them up for success.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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Neurodivergent Kids Flourish When They're Taught How Their Brains Work

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When teachers and parents talk to kids about having ADHD, autism or learning disabilities, they set them up for success

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How Do Gifted Adolescents See Themselves?

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How gifted adolescents view themselves is critical for understanding how to best support their development to ensure future happiness and productivity.

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The justification for gifted education is simple: Academically advanced children should be given work at their speed and level, both to nurture their talents and prevent them from becoming bored and disruptive in class.

Everything else-from how to define and identify gifted students, particularly those from traditionally underrrepresented groups, to how to serve them and nurture their long-term success-gets complicated.

"Where special ed. has a federal mandate-you must meet these students' needs-we don't have that," said Jill Adelson, a research scientist at Duke University's Talent Identification Program and the editor of the journal Gifted Child Quarterly. "We don't even have a common definition across states of what gifted education is."

Across several symposia at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting here, researchers added new wrinkles to the debate over how to academically support gifted students.

Slow Growth

For example: Prior studies have found most students experience a "summer slump," growing faster during school years and flattening out over summers. But a study previewed at the meeting found top-performing students show less flattening from school to summer in the elementary grades-and much slower growth during the school year than average-performing students.

Karen Rambo-Hernandez of West Virginia University and Matthew Makel of Duke looked at math and reading performance in 10 states that use the NWEA MAP computer-adaptive test in reading and mathematics. The researchers compared students who tested at the mean in 3rd grade to those who tested about three grade levels ahead of that, and then followed both groups' growth through 5th grade.

"The farther you started from your school's mean, the slower your growth," Rambo-Hernandez said. "In reading, the students who started at two standard deviations above the mean had much slower growth during the school year, and then they just kept trucking along with that same flow over the summer. So there was a real question as to whether or not those students were benefiting at all from their time in school."

Top-performing students in math were more likely to show higher growth during the school year than in the summer, but in both subjects top students grew significantly slower during the school year and faster during the summer than the average student. Those who started out ahead didn't outpace the average students' growth during the school year until 4th grade in math and 5th grade in reading. "In theory, if you slow the kids down long enough, eventually the curriculum will catch up with them. It's kind of sad," Rambo-Hernandez said.

The growth study looked at top performers, whether or not they had been in gifted programs. And as other studies at the meeting suggest, both identification and services can be spotty for academically gifted students.

Better Identification?

Academically gifted students aren't just further ahead than their classmates; research suggests they learn new concepts faster and differently. Yet districts rely on academic performance to identify gifted students, which can lead them to overlook students with disabilities and those from disadvantaged groups with less opportunity to learn.

Scott Peters, an associate education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and colleagues including Rambo-Hernandez, looked at the slowly growing trend to use district- or school-building-level comparison groups rather than national norms to identify academically advanced students while taking into account their local access to resources and challenging coursework. The reasoning goes that comparing students nationwide favors students from wealthier families and school districts that likely had more educational supports before and in the early years of school.

Using local comparison groups "is a way to maintain diversity without having to rely on something that's really race or ethnicity-specific for legal reasons, and it works fairly well," Peters said.

They analyzed test data for more than 3.3 million 3rd graders in 10,000 schools across 10 states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin from 2007 to 2016. They compared the percentage of students from different racial and socioeconomic groups who would have been identified as gifted in each school had their district identified students at the top 5 percent or 15 percent of national-, district-, or school-level test performance.

Using more local-level test data did help compensate for school-level differences in students' opportunity to learn, they found. Using the top 5 percent of students in reading at each school boosted the number of Latino students identified in reading and math by more than 150 percent. Black students were identified at more than triple the rate in reading and four times the rate in math, Peters said. Meanwhile, gifted identification rates for white and Asian students declined, though still stayed disproportionately high compared to their share of the student body.

But there's a catch: Using school-based comparison groups only works in districts with "extreme racial segregation" in schools, Peters said. "The schools that are perfectly integrated try to use within-building norms and have no effect whatsoever," he said.

Within-school gaps in preschool preparation and course tracking often mean that gifted programs within the same school often end up concentrating higher-income, white, and Asian-American students also.

Advanced Curriculum Lacking

Even after students are identified for gifted education, their enrichment often doesn't align to their needs.

University of Connecticut researchers looked at three states, all of which are considered ahead of the curve for requiring that academically gifted students be both identified and served, and for tracking the district programs and student achievement of gifted students over time. They collected state and district administrative data, surveyed 2,250 schools, and visited 40 individual programs.

More than 90 percent of the districts that they studied separately identified students for being advanced in reading and language arts, and more than 85 percent identified advanced students in math, according to Rashea Hamilton, a postdoctoral researcher at UConn's National Center for Research on Gifted Education. Yet little more than one in 10 districts used a reading curriculum designed for gifted students, and significantly fewer did so in math.

"That's something that tends to get lost," said D. Betsy McCoach, an education measurement and evaluation professor at the University of Connecticut and study co-author. "A kid who learns more quickly can get through the curriculum at a much faster pace."

Researchers found in math, 62 percent to 69 percent of districts reported their curriculum focused on content above students' grade level, and 54 percent to 69 percent of districts did so in reading. But only about half of districts said their gifted curricula moved at a faster pace in math, and significantly fewer did so in reading.

"It's definitely easier to accelerate in math," McCoach said. "You can be an awesome reader in 1st grade, but you're not going to give a 1st grader [George Orwell's novel] Animal Farm even if they could read it. There's an asynchrony between what you have the maturity to handle, literature-wise, and what you can read and comprehend."

Regardless of whether students were identified as gifted in reading or math, their enrichment tended to focus on "process skills" such as critical thinking, problem-solving, or creativity. In most districts, the choice of what to teach fell mostly or completely to individual teachers and varied widely from school to school.

Those findings may help explain a 2012 national study by Adelson and McCoach that found attending gifted education in kindergarten through grade 5 had no benefit for students in overall math or reading achievement.

Taking the Long View

One study did provide reason for optimism, though. Vanderbilt University's Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth has been tracking 700 highly gifted students-the top 1 percent or higher in math achievement-for 45 years and counting.

In its latest report, researchers found that patterns of these students' academic abilities and their social, aesthetic, and other interests at age 13 were better predictors than ability alone of what fields they entered and whether they achieved "eminence," such as becoming CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a tenured law or research professor, or a military leader, by age 50.

"Individual ability is important [for eminence in a field], but the ability pattern matters," said David Lubinski, a co-director of the study. "On the values inventory, if you scored high on theoretical interests and high on math ability, and relatively low on social and religious values, you're more likely to become a physicist or engineer. If you scored high on aesthetic and verbal ability, you're more likely to become a humanist. People who are CEOs of big organizations, scored high on reasoning and economic values, and less on theoreticals."

The takeaway for educators, he said, is the importance of tailoring education to students' interests as well as their abilities, and not forcing them to focus on, say, entering a science field because they are skilled in science or math.

"These precocious kids are brought to the attention of teachers because they are so conspicuously talented, like a 7-foot-8-inch high school freshman will stick out to the basketball coach," Lubinski said. "But there are a lot of tall kids who don't care to play basketball, thank you very much, and there are math-precocious kids who aren't interested in being a physicist, but in fighting terrorism or managing other organizations.

"People sometimes think that's a waste," he said, "but when we look where they are going, these kids are not not developing their talents; they are developing their talents in other areas. It's important to let kids keep their options open."

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4 Ways Schools Help or Hinder Gifted Students

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Gifted education programs can support academically advanced students or, in some cases, hold them back. Four studies presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting show how.

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"Excellence gaps" are the disparities in advanced academic performance that exist between student groups. These gaps have important implications for both academic equity and American economic competitiveness, as the most lucrative jobs often go to those who perform at the highest levels.

Although considerable work has evaluated how and why these excellence gaps occur, what's not been examined closely is what excellence gaps look like for students of different races/ethnicities within the same socioeconomic group. This new report uses NAEP data on eighth graders over the last two decades to trace the performance of America's highest-achieving students by both race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES).

Specifically, Fordham's research associate Meredith Coffey and national research director Adam Tyner examine:

The extent to which racial/ethnic excellence gaps can be explained by differences in SES;

Whether excellence gaps still exist when racial/ethnic groups are compared within the same socioeconomic groups; and

How excellence gaps by race/ethnicity and SES have shifted over the past two decades, including since the COVID-19 pandemic.

This new analysis reveals five key findings and several implications for education leaders and policymakers who want to increase the numbers of students from all backgrounds whose academic performance rises to the top.

Foreword
by Michael J. Petrilli and Amber M. Northern
Besides suffocating heat, humidity, and wildfires, the summer of 2023 also brought a seismic shift to higher education: the Supreme Court's striking down of affirmative action in college admissions.

Putting aside the rancorous debates about the rationale and implications for the decision, at the heart of the Harvard case was the clear evidence that Harvard was discriminating against Asian students.

An incriminating 2022 study about Harvard admissions found a "substantial penalty against Asian American applicants relative to their white counterparts." Scholars estimated that, given the overall admissions rate for Asian Americans at Harvard was around 5 percent, removing what amounted to a handicap would increase their admissions chances by at least 19 percent.

What's more, the researchers took on a surprisingly candid tone when noting the differences between the Asian and White applicant pool:
While it is widely understood that Asian American applicants are academically stronger than whites, it is startling just how much stronger they are. During the period we analyze, there were 42 percent more white applicants than Asian American applicants overall. Yet, among those who were in the top 10 percent of applicants based on grades and test scores, Asian American applicants outnumbered white applicants by more than 45 percent.
Startling indeed.

Findings from this new study, Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status, reminded us of this eye-popping imbalance. Authored by Fordham's Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner, the report digs into how race and socioeconomic status (SES) interact to shape academic "excellence gaps"-disparities in performance among groups of students achieving at the highest levels.

Their analysis utilizes nearly twenty years of eighth-grade reading and math assessment data (from 2003 to 2022) to document the progress of America's highest-performing students, meaning those who earned "Advanced" scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a., "The Nation's Report Card." Among other things, it finds that fewer Black and Hispanic students from the highest-SES group (those with college-educated mothers) are achieving at Advanced levels than we would expect given their socioeconomic status. That's a disparity clearly worth our attention.

But so are their findings on Asian American high achievers-who deserve our attention for a different reason. Two decades ago, Asian American and Pacific Islander students (AAPI) were already crushing it at the Advanced level, and they've only made more progress since then (Tables FW-1-2). Part of that progress is due to raising the floor: Coffey and Tyner find that, among students in the lower-SES ranks (those whose mothers have a high school diploma or less), there's a substantial rise over time in the proportion of AAPI students who are Advanced.

Add it up and we can see that the AAPI advantage has only grown.
Table FW-1. Percentage of students scoring at the Advanced level in math in 2003 and 2022 Table FW-2. Percentage of students scoring at the Advanced level in reading in 2003 and 2022
Now let's put these numbers into a context that is familiar to admissions officers at highly-selective colleges. If we consider both the percentage of students in each racial subgroup achieving at the Advanced level and their share of the student population, what does the racial composition of students scoring Advanced look like? Here are the pie charts for our top students in 2003 and again in 2022.
Figure FW-1. Racial composition of eighth grade students at the Advanced level in math in 2003 and in 2022
As anyone can plainly see, the proportion of Advanced students who are White dropped significantly, from 82 to 61 percent (Figure FW-1). Yet most of the diversity gains came from Asian students (who went from 10 percent to 22 percent) and, to a lesser degree, Hispanic students (from 3 percent to 8 percent). Unfortunately, the proportion of Advanced students who are Black decreased over that time, from a tragically low 3 to 2 percent.

Now let's see how it looks for reading in 2003 and then in 2022:
Figure FW-2. Racial composition of eighth grade students at the Advanced level in reading in 2003 and in 2022
The pattern in Figure FW-2 is largely the same: big declines in the proportion of White students, with large gains for Asian and Hispanic students-once again, more gains for the former than the latter when it comes to reading. The Black proportion is again down, from 5 to 3 percent.

*******

So what can we take from all of this, particularly when it comes to Asian high achievers?

First, they are making solid gains and their success deserves to be recognized.

Second, although our high-achieving students are a more diverse group than twenty years ago, most of this growing diversity is driven by gains by Asian and Hispanic students. For Hispanic students, that largely tracks the growth of their population as a whole, which has nearly doubled over the past two decades. That's part of the story for Asian students, too (their numbers are up by a third), but it's also due to their improved performance. Case in point: Our new report finds that Asian students are so high achieving that even those in the lowest-socioeconomic-status group often equal or outperform higher-SES students of other racial and ethnic groups.

Third, we need to learn from the success of AAPI students and their families-not be threatened by it or seek to depress their chances of gaining admission to prestigious institutions. At the national, state, and local levels, policymakers and educators should ask: Are there observable practices among Asian students that could apply more broadly? For instance, are they more likely to participate in extracurricular activities, sign up for more challenging classes, or take part in academic tutoring, clubs, or competitions? Are these behaviors helping AAPI students to reach the highest level of academic achievement? If so, how could smart policies expand those opportunities to students from other communities?

Education reformers spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resources (rightly so) on supporting low-performing students. But high performers are often left to fend for themselves. Let's just say this: It's not right. We can do better. And we should start doing better today.

Introduction

Piling on to months of alarming findings on learning loss, NWEA reported in July 2023 that progress toward academic recovery continues to lag, despite the return to in-person schooling. Last year's achievement gains were significantly smaller than typical prepandemic gains, leaving students over four months behind in both reading and math.[1] Exacerbating decades-old achievement gaps, the losses have been largest for Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. In other words, despite renewed national attention to issues of race and equity, American schools are still disproportionately failing their most marginalized students. And the stakes are high: kids in school during the pandemic could end up earning nearly 10 percent less than peers just a few years older,[2] with lifetime earnings reduced by 1.4, 2.4, and 2.1 percent for White, Black, and Hispanic students, respectively. And other generations will suffer, too, with a projected annual GDP loss of as much as $188 billion.[3]

What's more, learning loss has occurred across the achievement spectrum: the academic performance of even the highest-potential students has either plateaued or declined.[4] And historically underserved student groups are no exception.[5] On the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), for example, the number of Black and Hispanic eighth graders achieving Advanced math scores each dropped by half compared to 2019, declining to only 1 percent and 2 percent, respectively.[6] Ensuring that all students-including the highest achieving-have the opportunity to fulfill their academic potential is urgent for both fairness and economic reasons: individuals deserve the opportunity to reach their potential, and American economic competitiveness depends on the cultivation of innovations founded on advanced academic achievement.[7]

To this end, a growing body of research has called attention to the urgency of combating what Jonathan Plucker, Nathan Burroughs, and Ruiting Song termed "excellence gaps": disparities in academic performance among groups of students performing at the highest levels.[8] These gaps are evident in comparisons by race/ethnicity (Figure 1) and by socioeconomic status (Figure 2). Studies of excellence gaps have found disparities in advanced performance among students of different genders,[9] students in urban/rural settings,[10] and students with varying immigration histories.[11]
Figure 1. There are pronounced excellence gaps across racial/ethnic groups. Figure 2. There are pronounced excellence gaps across socioeconomic groups.
To date, much education policy has focused on overall achievement gaps, or average achievement differences between student subgroups. Researchers have increasingly explored not just the impact of individual demographic factors but also how different factors interact with one another to influence student achievement.[12] That is, if White students earn higher average math and reading scores than their Hispanic peers (Figure 3), is that simply because the families of White students are wealthier on average than those of their Hispanic peers? Academic success is, of course, strongly associated with socioeconomic status (SES).[13] Indeed, considerable research suggests that both race and SES-at least as they are typically measured-correlate with achievement gaps. Studies show, for instance, that Black students, on average, underperform their White peers at each socioeconomic level.[14]
Figure 3. Widely documented gaps appear in educational proficiency by race/ethnicity.
What education research has not yet examined closely, however, is what excellence gaps look like for students of different races/ethnicities within the same socioeconomic group, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.[15] If differences in SES can explain racial disparities at the top end of academic achievement, then the critical action steps are to address economic inequalities and improve schools serving the lowest-income students. But if SES doesn't fully explain the excellence gap-as it doesn't for the broader racial achievement gap-then we must investigate why our schools are failing to serve other underrepresented students (e.g., Black and Hispanic students) with the greatest potential.[16] Solving any problem first requires understanding its cause.

This study is the first to focus on the question of how race and SES interact to shape excellence gaps. Using NAEP data on eighth graders over the last two decades, we trace the performance of America's highest-achieving students by both race/ethnicity and SES.

To illuminate the interaction of race and SES in predicting excellence gaps, this analysis addresses the following questions:

To what extent can racial/ethnic excellence gaps be explained by differences in SES?

Are excellence gaps still apparent when racial/ethnic groups are compared within the same socioeconomic groups?

How have excellence gaps by race/ethnicity and SES shifted over the past two decades, including since the COVID-19 pandemic?

Data and methods

We acquired data on high achievers using the NAEP Data Explorer (NDE). The NAEP is administered by the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), which is housed within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. Reading and math assessments have typically been administered every two years for eighth-grade students. Other subjects are assessed less frequently.[17] The next most frequently tested subject is science, in which eighth graders are assessed about every four years.[18]

We use publicly available, national NAEP reading and math assessment data from 2003 to 2022 (Table 1), as well as science data from 2009 to 2019 (the latter is in the Appendix). With tests and student surveys typically covering more than 100,000 eighth-grade students during each administration year,[19] the NAEP provides a large-scale, representative picture of how American students are performing across time and in various subjects.[20] The high quality of the NAEP reading, math, and science assessments are part of what make the NAEP the "Nation's Report Card."
Table 1. Math and reading are assessed regularly by the NAEP (eighth grade).
Our analysis examines eighth-grade results, which provide the most useful data for our purposes. Fourth graders also take the NAEP at the same intervals, but their surveys provide less socioeconomic data because NCES has found their responses on questions like mother's education to be unreliable.[21] Twelfth graders, the other age group that participates in the NAEP, take the assessments less frequently and may supply less indicative results due to potential lack of academic engagement at the end of high school.[22]
Identifying race and socioeconomic status
Our analysis focuses on excellence gaps among the four largest racial/ethnic groups: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students, Black students, Hispanic students, and White students.[23] We focus on mother's education as a proxy for SES,[24] although some results by self-reported number of books in the home[25] and whether the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL)[26] are also included for context in the Appendix (the results are similar regardless of the SES variable used).

Mother's education is measured by a question on the NAEP questionnaire in which test-takers select from the following options: "She did not finish high school," "She graduated from high school," "She had some education after high school," "She graduated from college," or "I don't know"[27] (the final group is excluded from the analyses).

Note that the available proxies for SES are not comprehensive and, in NDE, cannot be used in conjunction with each other (while including race/ethnicity as well). Not only do both variables rely on student knowledge or estimation, but what the term "socioeconomic status" encompasses is contested and may include family financial resources, family structure, and other factors for which data are unavailable. Moreover, there is race- and ethnicity-specific variability in the SES distributions even within SES categories. For example, among households where the mother has completed college (our highest-SES group), other socioeconomic differences, such as differences in income or family structure, likely remain.[28] Although this is the first study to focus on the intersection of race/ethnicity and SES as those factors correlate with excellence gaps, if more nuanced data were available, our results could be somewhat different. For example, it is possible that a more comprehensive picture of SES would have more predictive power and diminish the separate predictive power of race/ethnicity, as has been shown in some other studies.[29]
Identifying advanced achievement
To identify the highest-performing students, we evaluate the proportion of students who earned "Advanced" scores on the NAEP. This is the highest achievement level and indicates that a student has demonstrated full competency in the subject via "superior performance." For example, for an eighth grader to earn the Advanced designation in math, she must demonstrate high-level skills, such as analyzing whether a certain data visualization will be helpful for solving a given problem.[30] In reading, Advanced skills include, for example, the ability to synthesize textual evidence from multiple sources in order to support a claim.[31]

Using data from NDE covering all eighth-grade students for each subject and year, we created crosstabs with our race variable and each of our SES variables, including data on the percentage of students in each racial/socioeconomic group who earned Advanced scores (for example, the percentage of Advanced-scoring White students whose mothers did not complete high school).[32] It should be noted that NDE cannot conduct statistical significance tests for the pooled samples and trends over time used in this report. Fortunately, the large size of the NAEP samples makes identifying statistical significance trivial in most cases; if there is a substantive difference between groups, that difference is very likely to be statistically significant.

Results I: The intersection of race and SES in excellence gaps

In this section, we examine the most recent NAEP data collections in order to evaluate how the intersection of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic categories relates to excellence gaps.
Finding 1: Even within SES groups, racial/ethnic excellence gaps persist.
As shown in Figure 4, differences in rates of Advanced achievement remain when students are disaggregated into SES groups. Specifically, AAPI students achieve Advanced at the highest rate, followed by White students, then Hispanic students, and then Black students, who are sometimes tied with Hispanic students.
Figure 4. Excellence gaps by race/ethnicity persist within student socioeconomic groups.
At the same time, within each racial/ethnic group, students of the highest SES achieve Advanced at the highest rate, with a consistent decrease in the share of students achieving at the Advanced level as SES decreases.

Yet there is also some overlap among the racial/ethnic groups of higher and lower SES. For example, in math, the highest-SES Black students are more likely to achieve at the Advanced level than one of the groups of White students and two of the groups of Hispanic students. Specifically, 3.0 percent of the highest-SES Black students achieve at the Advanced level, outperforming White students whose mothers did not finish high school (2.5 percent), Hispanic students whose mothers finished high school (2.0 percent), and Hispanic students whose mothers did not finish high school (1.5 percent).

Similarly, in reading, although White students are more likely to achieve at the Advanced level than their Hispanic counterparts within each SES category, the highest-SES Hispanic students are more likely to achieve at the Advanced level (3.0 percent) than the two lower-SES groups of White students, whose Advanced achievement rates were 2.0 percent and 1.3 percent.

AAPI students, however, are so high achieving that even those in the lowest SES group often equal or outperform higher-SES students of other racial/ethnic groups. In math, 13.0 percent of the lowest-SES AAPI students reach the Advanced level, a figure surpassed only by the highest-SES White students (and other groups of AAPI students). The same pattern holds in reading.

We present these same data in descending order by Advanced rates in table form below.
Table 2. Table presentation of Figure 4.

Student Groups

% Advanced Rate (Math)

Student Groups

% Advanced Rate (Reading)

As indicated, we use mother's education as our primary measure of SES. But the SES and racial/ethnic patterns of Advanced achievement on eighth-grade math and reading NAEP assessments are similar when either FRL ( Appendix, Figure A.1) or self-reported number of books in the home is used instead ( Appendix, Figure A.2). Science has much lower levels of Advanced achievement, meaning that some racial/ethnic groups do not reach 1 percent Advanced achievement, regardless of SES ( Appendix, Figure A.3).
Finding 2: Racial/ethnic excellence gaps are larger among higher-SES students than lower-SES students.
Another way of examining the intersection of race and SES in producing excellence gaps is to see how racial/ethnic excellence gaps vary by SES. Consider Figure 5, which shows the reading excellence gaps in percentage-point differences between groups overall ("all") and within SES groups. If racial/ethnic gaps were driven by SES, we would expect the gaps to be much smaller-or even nonexistent-within SES groups. But in fact, excellence gaps are not necessarily smaller within SES groups. Indeed, within the highest-SES group (college-educated mothers), excellence gaps are always larger than the overall gap between racial/ethnic groups. On the other hand, for the two lowest SES groups, the White-Black and White-Hispanic excellence gaps are small, ranging from 0.3 to 2.0 percentage points.

For example, Figure 5 shows that the overall AAPI-Black excellence gap in reading is 10.7 percentage points. Yet the gap between AAPI and Black students whose mothers graduated from college is even larger (14.5 percentage points). Likewise for the White-Hispanic excellence gap: the gap for students in the highest SES group (4.3 percentage points) is larger than the overall 3.7 percentage point gap. In contrast, for students whose mothers have a high school diploma or less, the White-Hispanic excellence gap is at most 1.0 percentage point. The generally low rates of Advanced achievement for lower-SES students helps explain why excellence gaps are relatively small for lower-SES students and much larger for high-SES students.
Figure 5. Reading excellence gaps are largest for students in the highest socioeconomic group.
In math (Figure 6), we see a very similar pattern: racial/ethnic excellence gaps are largest within the highest-SES group and are larger than the overall racial/ethnic gaps in Advanced achievement.[33] As with reading, racial/ethnic excellence gaps diminish within SES groups, and for the lowest-SES group (those students whose mothers do not have high school diplomas), the White-Hispanic and White-Black excellence gaps are minimal-1.0 to 2.0 percentage points, respectively (all of these patterns are similar when using self-reported number of books in the home to operationalize SES; see Figure A.4 and A.5 in the Appendix).
Figure 6. Math excellence gaps are largest for the highest-SES students. Finding 3: SES has a similar effect on all racial/ethnic groups.
When evaluating the intersection between racial/ethnic identification and SES, it is helpful to consider the extent to which SES moderates racial/ethnic excellence gaps. Figure 7 uses the highest-SES group (students whose mothers are college graduates) as the reference group and shows how the bottom three SES groups compare to the top SES group in terms of Advanced achievement rates. Calculated separately for each racial/ethnic group, each bar shows the percentage of students in that SES group divided by the percentage in the high-SES group, such that if the rates of Advanced achievement were equal, the value would be one.

Figure 7 shows that the effect of SES on Advanced achievement is similar across groups. For math, the values for students with mothers who attained "some college" are all between 0.5 and 0.6, meaning that a little more than half of those students achieved at the Advanced level compared to students in the highest-SES group. For the lower-SES groups, SES has a similarly consistent effect, with the exception of lower-SES AAPI students-who, as indicated earlier, outperform other racial/ethnic groups. Although the effect of SES on Advanced reading achievement appears to be erratic for Black students, that is likely a rounding issue based on the fact that just 1 percent of the highest-SES Black students achieved at that level in all four years of NAEP data analyzed (these patterns are similar when using self-reported number of books in the home to operationalize SES; see Figure A.6 in the Appendix).
Figure 7. The effect of SES on Advanced achievement is generally consistent across racial/ethnic groups.
Results II: Excellence gaps by race and SES over time

The patterns in excellence gaps described above appear in most of the recent years of NAEP data (2015 to 2022). In this section, we examine trends in these data over the past two decades, once again using the highest level of education attained by the student's mother as the SES variable (additional results may be found in the Appendix).
Finding 4: The last two decades have generally seen rising Advanced achievement for all racial/ethnic and SES groups but particularly for AAPI students.
For all but the lowest-SES Hispanic and Black students, Advanced achievement is appreciably higher in the most recent data collections than in the early 2000s, the earliest years of this study. This pattern holds for both reading (Figure 8) and math (Figure 9).
Figure 8. Over the past two decades, reading excellence gaps by race/ethnicity within socioeconomic groups have endured.
Among the lower-SES ranks, a particularly positive development is the substantial rise in the proportion of AAPI students who are Advanced achievers. In the early 2000s, these students typically outperformed other low-SES groups by only a percentage point or two, and no racial/ethnic group's lowest-SES students had more than 3 percent achieving Advanced in math or 1 percent in reading. But lower-SES AAPI students broke away from the pack beginning in the early 2010s and strongly outperformed their counterparts in all other racial/ethnic groups in recent years. By 2019, 11 percent of the lowest-SES group of AAPI students reached Advanced in math, and 2 percent notched Advanced in reading. Their improvement is notable and encouraging, despite the fact that it does equate to widening excellence gaps during the study period, as AAPI students were slightly outperforming other groups even in the earlier years of the data.

Some of these patterns of Advanced achievement over time appear for science, but the lower overall rate of high achievement means that the gaps are mostly apparent for higher-SES groups. For more on this, see Figure A.7 in the Appendix.
Finding 5: The pandemic era saw declining Advanced achievement for all racial/ethnic groups.
Another-more troubling-trend is the reversal of earlier progress in Advanced achievement between the 2019 and 2022 NAEP data collections, particularly in math (Figure 9). Especially among higher-SES students, Advanced achievement rates generally rose from 2003 to 2019 for all racial/ethnic groups. Between 2019 and 2022, however, among the students whose mothers attended college (whether or not they graduated), Advanced math achievement dropped for all racial/ethnic groups. These declines in Advanced performance are, of course, likely attributable to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which other studies have shown took a toll on the performance of lower achievers even more than that of high achievers.[34] These patterns are similar when using self-reported number of books in the home as the SES variable (see Figure A.8 and Figure A.9).
Figure 9. Over the past two decades, math excellence gaps by race/ethnicity within socioeconomic groups have not closed.
Summing up

We show that excellence gaps are predicted independently by student race/ethnicity and SES. Controlling for SES with the data available in NDE mitigates-but does not eliminate-excellence gaps by student race/ethnicity. That means that even when various racial/ethnic groups are compared within same-SES categories, excellence gaps largely remain. Still, race is not the entire story: higher-SES Black and Hispanic students sometimes outperform lower-SES White students. We also find that because Advanced achievement rates are generally low for lower-SES students, racial/ethnic excellence gaps are even larger within the highest-SES group than they are for students overall.

In addition, we see that all racial/ethnic groups had higher shares of students achieving at the Advanced level in the 2010s than the 2000s, although the lowest-SES Hispanic and Black students saw little growth in Advanced achievement. On the other hand, AAPI students of all SES categories have experienced soaring rates of Advanced achievement, and more research is needed to understand what factors are behind this success story.

Lastly, we find that excellence gaps have grown during the period of this study (2003 to 2022), particularly in math. The period coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic saw some declines in Advanced achievement, although these are larger in math than in reading.

Policy implications

So what might policymakers and practitioners do to boost Advanced achievement for all student groups while working to narrow excellence gaps?

Happily, a recent report from the National Working Group on Advanced Education, on which one of us served, offers thirty-six concrete recommendations for policymakers and practitioners attempting to build a wider, more diverse pipeline of advanced learners (see Summary of recommendations of the National Working Group on Advanced Education).

The Working Group did not attempt to differentiate between recommendations focused on economically disadvantaged students versus those targeting underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. The present study indicates that, on the whole, that strategy was wise. Given the large and persistent impact that SES plays across all racial groups, actions that support lower-SES groups will support most underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, too. For example, making sure that every elementary school in the country, including high-poverty Title I schools, has a robust gifted program in place should dramatically increase the number of Black, Hispanic, and lower-SES students entering the pipeline of advanced learning opportunities.

However, this study also indicates that focusing on lower-SES groups alone won't be enough to narrow racial/ethnic excellence gaps, because those gaps are particularly large among the highest-SES group. Put another way, policymakers and practitioners need to wrestle with the fact that fewer high-SES Black and Hispanic students, in particular, are achieving at Advanced levels than we would expect given their SES.

Several of the Working Group's recommendations should be helpful to high-SES Black and Hispanic students, such as its calls for culturally relevant programs and curricula, "universal screening" as a check on racial bias in assigning students to gifted programs and to advanced courses, and stronger data-reporting requirements.

But even more aggressive actions might be necessary. Staffing policies provide a useful lever. Studies have shown that same-race teachers improve academic achievement for Black students.[35] A smaller body of research suggests that same-race teachers may also have a positive, if more modest, effect on Hispanic students' achievement.[36] Having teachers of color for gifted and advanced programming has been shown to increase the enrollment of students of color in advanced courses.[37] To this end, state- and district-level policymakers can expand and invest in teacher career pathways that educators of color are most likely to pursue, including Grow Your Own teacher-prep programs and alternative teacher career pathways. Leaders will need to take care, however, not to run afoul of constitutional limitations on explicitly race-based policies, especially in light of the Supreme Court's recent affirmative action decision.

Finally, leaders should invest in better understanding the remarkable success of even the lowest-SES AAPI students in reaching the highest levels of achievement. For example, are high-achieving AAPI students more likely to participate in after-school tutoring and academic enrichment programs? If so, how could policy expand those opportunities to students from other communities?

Shrinking excellence gaps, which are continuing to expand, is a tall order. The good news is that even seemingly small improvements in percentages will mean that thousands more children have gained the opportunity to excel.

Appendix

In this Appendix, we provide some additional results, including presentation of excellence gaps using alternative SES measures and excellence gaps in science.
Figure A.1. Math and reading excellence gaps by race/ethnicity persist within socioeconomic groups (using FRL).

Figure A.9. Over the past two decades, reading excellence gaps by race/ethnicity persist within socioeconomic groups (using books in the home). Figure A.8. Over the past two decades, math excellence gaps by race/ethnicity have persisted within socioeconomic groups (using books in the home). Figure A.7. Over the past two decades, science excellence gaps by race/ethnicity have persisted within socioeconomic groups (using mother's education). Figure A.6. The effect of SES on Advanced achievement is generally consistent across racial/ethnic groups (using number of books reported in the home). Figure A.5. Reading excellence gaps are largest for the highest-SES students (using number of books reported in the home). Figure A.4. Math excellence gaps are largest for the highest-SES students (using number of books reported in the home). Figure A.3. Science excellence gaps by race/ethnicity persist within socioeconomic groups (using mother's education). Figure A.2. Math and reading excellence gaps by race/ethnicity persist within socioeconomic groups (using number of books reported in the home).
Endnotes

[12] For work on the interaction of race, socioeconomic status, and gender, see Rebecca McGraw and Sarah Thuele Lubi, "A Closer Look at Gender in NAEP Mathematics Achievement and Affect Data: Intersections with Achievement, Race/Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status," Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 37, no. 2 (2006): 129-50, https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/jrme/37/2/article-p129.xml, and Laia Bécares and Naomi Priest, "Understanding the Influence of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class on Inequalities in Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes among Eighth-Grade Students: Findings from an Intersectionality Approach," PLOS One 10, no. 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141363. For work on the interaction of race, socioeconomic status, and sexuality, see Sung Tae Jang, "The schooling experiences and aspirations of students belonging to intersecting marginalisations based on race or ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic status," Race Ethnicity and Education (2020), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13613324.2020.1842350. For work on the intersection of race and community poverty rates, see Mellissa S. Gordon and Ming Cui, "The Intersection of Race and Community Poverty and Its Effects on Adolescents' Academic Achievement," Youth & Society 50, no. 7 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X16646590, and R. Aaron Wisman, "Operationalizing the Intersection of Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity in Predicting School-Level Academic Achievement," Education and Urban Society 52, no. 6 (2020), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013124519894989.

[14] Sarah Theule Lubienski, "A Closer Look at Black-White Mathematics Gaps: Intersections of Race and SES in NAEP Achievement and Instructional Practices Data," The Journal of Negro Education 71, no. 4 (2002): 269-87, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3211180; Katherine W. Pascall, Elizabeth T. Gershoff, and Megan Kuhfeld, "A Two Decade Examination of Historical Race/Ethnicity Disparities in Academic Achievement by Poverty Status," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 47, no. 6 (2018): 1164-77, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209685; Daphne A. Henry, Laura Betancur Cortés, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, "Black-White achievement gaps differ by family socioeconomic status from early childhood through early adolescence," Journal of Educational Psychology 112, no. 8, 1471-89, https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000439.

About this study

This report was made possible through the generous support of our sister organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. In addition, we are grateful to external advisers Scott Peters, senior research scientist at NWEA, and Jonathan Plucker, the Julian C. Stanley Endowed Professor of Talent Development at Johns Hopkins University, for their multiple rounds of insightful feedback; to Pamela Tatz for her thorough copyedit; and to Dave Williams for designing the figures and tables.

At Fordham, we thank Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner for authoring this analysis, Chester E. Finn, Jr. for reviewing drafts, Jeanette Luna for handling funder communications, and Victoria McDougald for her role in dissemination.

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Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status

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This study uses NAEP data on eighth graders over the last two decades to trace the performance of America's highest-achieving students by both race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

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The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

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The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together [McGhee, Heather] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

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Drawing connections between growth, mastery, and student self-efficacy, this “next generation” approach to assessment prioritizes student…

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A podcast about parenting and educating K-12 gifted and talented kids from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY).

Show notes available at https://johnshopkinscty.org/bright-now-season-three-show-notes

A podcast about parenting and educating K-12 gifted and talented kids from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY).

Show notes available at https://johnshopkinscty.org/bright-now-season-three-show-notes

One of the top resources for gifted parents and educators!

There are so many topics to talk about when you talk about gifted education, but Bright Now has done a remarkable job over the last few years of curating a useful and focused series of discussions and interviews. The guests are well-chosen and the presentation is crisp and on-topic, so you don't have to dedicate a huge amount of time to get value from each episode. Also, it is very professionally edited and recorded, which makes it easy to listen to. Just about everyone involved in gifted education, and everyone parenting a gifted child, will find something useful and thoughtful in this podcast.

A Great Resource

I have been an avid listener for the life of this podcast. The range of issues presented has been both interesting and enormously informative. A couple of highlights for me as a CTY parent have been, developmental issues as regards talented youth, and the recent college application process stories.
One thing that I would love to see added for each episode, would be an additional resource list for further investigation.
Please continue with the great work!

Hope there are more episodes coming!

I just found this podcast and really enjoy it. I noticed there's been a lull since the last one, so I hope it's just on hiatus and that there are more coming.

A request if anyone who produces the podcast is reading: There are so many fascinating CTY alums out there. I would love to hear as a feature on this podcast longform interviews with some of those alums, where they share their personal stories of how their talents were first identified, what specific experiences helped them foster those talents, what hindered them along their journey and how they overcame those challenges, and what advice would they give to young people today/their parents. I would listen to these with great interest and am sure others out here in listener-land would too!

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A podcast about parenting and educating K-12 gifted and talented kids from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY). Show notes available at https://johnshopkinscty.org/bright-now-season-three-show-notes A podcast about parenting and educating K-12 gifted and talented kids from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY).

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American Consortium for Equity in Education

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American Consortium for Equity in Education

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Equity & Access in American Pre K-12 Education | American Consortium for Equity in Education

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Online journal publication, articles, research, resources, products and marketing solutions promoting equity and access in education.

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With Understanding Comes Calm - Compassionate guidance. Durable strategies. For the 2e Community.

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The Dangerous Diminishment of the Term "Gifted" - With Understanding Comes Calm

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There is a movement afoot to substitute the term "advanced learner" for gifted. This is an attempt to "dumb down" a moniker that stands for way more than intellectual acumen and to couch the change within the misleading goal of making enriched learning available to all.