Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Elitism

Why do some people find gifted education to be elitist? No one argues against special education programs or for proper athletic programs for talented athletes. Why is it that the same logic does not apply to education?

It is my understanding that some people do not perceive or accept that the gifted have naturally occurring differing educational needs, and that this MAY include needs for both advanced academics and also support/remediation for disabilities (twice exceptional or 2e, which may be thought of along the lines of an intersectionality).

Rather, some people perceive the designation of "gifted" as an honor to be grasped at. Educational systems purposefully creating too few seats in gifted programs generates competition, lotteries, and feeds into the sense of "gifted" as something desirable rather than a range of needs to be met.

Unfortunately, some parents of gifted children may feed into this conflation of gifted -and- high achieving. Examples of useful search terms to learn more about this may include Tiger Parenting, Tiger Moms, hothousing, helicopter parents.

Following along this line of thinking, some people may be inclined to believe that giftedness is not naturally occurring throughout the population but rather is a result of social/cultural conditioning created by the wealthy for benefit the wealthy, to the exclusion of others.

To assist parents who may be unfamiliar with giftedness, with recognizing some of the early traits and behaviors which may be observed in young children, this roundup of links may be of interest: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....p_of_traits_is_my_baby_o.html#Post248478

This old post, from a thread discussing gifted myths, may also be of interest: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....t_Should_Everyone_Know_a.html#Post161756

Thanks for the response! I will check out those old threads.

Anti-intellectualism across one’s culture likely feeds into it as well. It’s a huge problem in our region of the U.S.

Actually special education is carefully tracked so as not to funnel people into special education and diminish their chances of success. There's a whole federal network built around it with reporting agencies, lawyers, and such.

And gifted programs CAN be elitist. They don't have to be but they can be. No need to go into all the examples, but in some places they are not recognizing minorities, children from impoverished backgrounds, etc. Two tiers of education is not OK and as a country, we are constantly trying to balance and reimagine the role of education. Is it about being fair to all and offering all the SAME opportunity? Is it about growing talent to move the country forward? It's not a simple subject and fraught with politics and policy.

And on the subject of athletics, the public school system generally is not growing elite athletes. Most of that comes from private opportunities that may allow you entrance to an elite public school team (high school and college), but if you want to grow a hockey player, a swimmer, pretty much any sport, you have to private pay. The government does not have a program to search for athletic talent and grow it.

I view gifted programs that offer experiences to gifted students that would actually benefit more students than are given access to them to be elitist.

And that would be just about all of them.

That’s why I don’t advocate for gifted programs as such but for schools to support all students to strive towards their individual potentials. My kids attend ‘regular’ local primary & secondary schools and over the years, we’ve made many donations so that the schools could provide enrichment activities to any students who are interested in participating.

This type of allegation/accusation must not go unquestioned. Can you name even one place where a student is not recognized as gifted based on minority status and/or impoverished background?

Please clarify, did you mean to say:

Public schools which do not have gifted programs may tend to occur more often in areas with fewer students who tend to qualify for such programs, and these areas may tend to be impoverished.

Public schools which limit their number of gifted seats to fewer than the number of pupils who qualify as gifted may tend to have disproportionally smaller number of minority students participating, when fewer minority parents sign up for the gifted seat lottery.

Bear in mind that there are levels of gifted, differing interests among gifted children, and differing parental viewpoints (including various degrees of hothousing, pushy, competitive, laissez-faire, free-range parenting styles).

Rather than focus on the hyperbole of elite athletes and lack of governmental talent search for them, it seems that the OP is speaking of everyday situations. For example, most public schools offer sports teams at both VARSITY and Junior-varsity (JV) level, to appropriately support and grow the level of talent inherent in their student body. The sorting by athletic ability tends to be done without regard to quotas or private pay opportunities, and recognizes natural differences among students which may provide an advantage in a particular sport.

A word about enrichment... wonderful for student-led interests outside of the classroom, but no substitute for advanced academics.

It took me a while to find, but here is a report from 1997, titled What it Means to Teach Gifted Learners Well, by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Ed.D., University of Virginia. This report is on the website of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC).

Unfortunately, it appears that much of what was known a quarter of a century ago has been forgotten or pushed aside with the introduction of common core and the focus on creating equal outcomes for all students.

Link - https://www.nagc.org/resources-publ...what-it-means-teach-gifted-learners-well

Archived on WayBack Machine, internet archive -
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/gifted-education-practices/what-it-means-teach-gifted-learners-well

At one point, advanced academics were provided based on student need for advanced material in order to learn something new.

Then came a movement to provide advanced academics to those who need or may benefit from the the advanced material. The students who "may benefit from" the advanced academics often needed additional supports. An example was allowing students to enroll in AP courses, without having taken prerequisites. While focusing on this group, the needs of the highest group of students (gifted students) tended to be ignored.

I am a proponent of expanding the number of seats in any gifted program or advanced academics to meet the number of pupils who qualify.

Indigo-- thanks for your response. I don't accept your characterization of my statements or the choices you have given me as clarification. I meant what I said or would not have posted. It's just a viewpoint that happens to have data and policy behind it. That's all.

"allegation/accusation" as you appear to be mentioning violations of the law: https://www.findlaw.com/civilrights/discrimination/race-discrimination-in-education.html

Please feel free to share the data and policy which inform your view that "in some places they are not recognizing minorities, children from impoverished backgrounds, etc."

My point in responding to you was to make clear that I do not intend to change my post.

I did not ask you to change your post. I asked whether you could back up what you said, by providing even one place where what you claim, is occurring. I also asked if you could clarify your meaning.

After you mentioned data and policy in a subsequent post, I asked if you could point to data and/or policy which informs your view.

If unable or unwilling to provide any substantiating facts or source, your statements may be considered "unfounded."

I don't understand what you're disagreeing with. For a community focused on gifted education and gifted kids at the upper end of that scale, this should be something that we've all read about many times over.

Someone might disagree with the position papers out there but it makes no sense to argue from a position of "Show me something that supports your claim."

https://www.edpost.com/stories/gift...eing-ignored-and-thats-bad-for-all-of-us
In this link, they briefly explain how those kids are being ignored. In districts that use a universal screening approach, they find more Black, Hispanic and low income students. In areas that don't use universal screening to find gifted kids, it's perfectly reasonable to state that they are ignoring such students - particularly the low income ones.

There are plenty of papers out there about how, in districts that rely on teacher referral to gifted programs, black students are not referred to gifted programs with the same frequency as their white or Asian counterparts when they are paired with non-black instructors. That is an example of being ignored. You can find plenty of links covering this but we should all already be familiar with the broad strokes.

We can probably shrink the conversation to the concept of "educational malnourishment". Essentially, too many gifted programs identify students based on achievement rather than on giftedness. They admit to their programs around the 2nd or 3rd grade after discrepancies in educational opportunities have calcified certain achievement differences.

This places students from lower education backgrounds at a disadvantage for identification, either via teacher referral or achievement tests. Hence why universal screening done earlier in the student's academic life id's more black, Hispanic and lower income students -- it seeks to id the students before the school system has placed them behind better resourced students.

But that's not really the point of my post. The point of my post is that this is easily found information for anyone who bothers to look. You can argue about if you agree with the widely claimed causes for those kids being ignored but it doesn't make sense in this day and age to pretend that the claim of students being ignored is so unusual that someone has to source it before it can be addressed seriously.

Frankly, it's dismissive.

https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/new-publications/gifted-education-in-the-united-states/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...k-students-odds-of-being-labeled-gifted/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...k-students-odds-of-being-labeled-gifted/
https://www.nagc.org/sites/default/...g%20Gifted%20Students%20of%20Poverty.pdf
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ898573.pdf
https://edublog.scholastic.com/post...are-overlooked-gifted-talented-education

Anyway, there are some links that also address this subject. It's hardly exhaustive but it's an okay place to start.

Hello philly, how interesting of you to share what informs YOUR viewpoint, as though this must also be what has informed spaghetti's viewpoint.

In the list of links which you provided, I find nothing newer than 5 years old, therefore I do question the current tense of spaghetti's statement that "in some places they are not recognizing minorities, children from impoverished backgrounds, etc."

Although some may disagree, it makes sense to seek clarification, facts, data, policy, and source.

Thank you Philly. Good sources.

It makes sense to seek clarification, etc. when we're talking about things that are rarely discussed or generally unknown, especially when it's an uninformed audience. But this isn't such a community. At the minimum, based on the frequency of your posting, you certainly don't post like you're an uninformed member of the community.

So, you can understand my surprise when you start demanding proof for something that is heavily discussed in the gifted education space. You certainly have to come across it many, many times prior to this thread. If you don't agree with it then just say that instead of asking posters to jump through empty hoops.

And it's not about what informs my perspective or spaghetti's, it's the information repeatedly discussed and shared by the people who research and engage this field. Similarly, the 5 years don't matter. If you have more recent facts, data, policy, or sources, just attach it instead of demanding proof of something and then trying to minimize the information you received without rising to the standard that you tried to set for others.

I am as well. I am also a proponent of making sure that the offerings are focused on advanced academics that are appropriate for gifted students. So not merely acceleration into classes for average students and not "enrichment."

And as far as qualifying goes, I am a proponent of making it essentially opt-in while at the same time ensuring that standards remain high. This means that students who opt in and for whom the work is too difficult are allowed to exit the program or class easily and without penalty. This is different from what you describe regarding AP classes being dumbed down to appeal to a larger group.

It makes sense to seek clarification, facts, data, policy, and source when one has a question as to what has informed another's viewpoint. The gifted population, and those who study them, are not a monolith but represent a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge bases.

Remaining on topic, I will share for the OP and all future readers of this thread, a reminder that correlation does not mean causation. This remains true regardless how often it may be implied otherwise. Regarding correlation/causation, these links may be of interest:
1) How to Lie with Statistics (1954) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics
2) Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

When considering whether gifted education equates/translates to "Elitism," it is OK to disagree. It is also OK to seek clarification, facts, data, policy, and source which informs one's viewpoint.

When considering qualifying for an AP course, this free online tool, AP Potential, may be of interest: https://appotential.collegeboard.org/