Emily Oster

2 minute read Emily Oster

Emily Oster

What’s the Data Behind Gifted and Talented Programs?

Q&A on long-term impacts

Emily Oster

2 minute read

Is there any data showing the value of gifted and talented programs? Does it vary by age? We have the opportunity to have our first grader join the program. It’s at our home school, so my partner thinks we should. But I went through these programs growing up and exemplified all of the memes about how you’re now a perfectionist adult with anxiety, so I’m not convinced it’s worth it for a 6-year-old.

—Former GT kid

Gifted and talented programs generate complex feelings in educators and policymakers. On one hand, they may seem like a good idea. As a teacher, one of the most challenging things is dealing with students with differing abilities. Especially in a large class, dividing students into groups with more similar abilities may make teaching both groups more effective.

RDNE Stock project / Pexels

However, there are real concerns about tracking students early on, when skills are still developing. This is especially true when overlaid with the fact that white and Asian students are more likely to be placed in these programs than Black or Hispanic students. 

Your question, though, was about the value. This is a challenging question to answer with data, since the students in G&T programs are, by definition, selected. One paper gets around this by comparing students just above and just below the cutoff for getting into a G&T program. The overall findings, in summary, are that there are no impacts of the G&T program on student achievement.  

The authors argue that the positive impact of stronger peers is a double-edged sword — improving things in some ways but also possibly lowering motivation for some students. 

Although this paper has the best causal evidence, other research similarly doesn’t point to large impacts. It doesn’t look like the programs matter very much in any direction in terms of achievement.  

I’m not sure where this leaves you! It might be worth visiting the different classrooms to get a sense of where your daughter would feel the most comfortable. This is one of those classic big-kid questions in which there is simply no substitute for thinking carefully about the circumstances of your particular child.

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Jules the First
12 days ago

As the product of an excellent G&T programme in the 1980s and 1990s, I can say that a good programme is invaluable to gifted children, especially those more than one standard deviation above average (ie the kids who are more than just clever); it’s less about boosting academic excellence and more about giving these children a properly demanding academic experience and an authentic peer group who “suffer” from the same social weaknesses and therefore represent a “safe” population to learn social skills with, safe from the label of “the smart one” or “the perfect one”. But these programmes are few and far between and even rarer these days because of the prevalence of lousy programmes which rely on classroom grades or teacher recommendations rather than rigorous psychological assessments (to be admitted to the programme I was in required two different aptitude assessments performed by a licensed child psychologist, a classroom observation by a trained assessor, plus a statement from the child setting out why they wanted to attend the programme, and parents were given coaching and support in how to communicate the concept of giftedness to their children and peers.). Is a crappy G&T programme better than a regular classroom? Maybe, if parents are prepared and able to support kids through the potential negatives (focus on continuing performance in test scores, homework volumes, insistence on across-the-board high performance, social and performance anxiety, etc). But the predominance of terrible G&T programmes does not negate the need for good ones, and the benefits of clustered programming are much bigger for kids closer to the extreme. But I’ll finish by saying that there are far fewer people out there insisting that special needs classrooms are pointless and demanding that profoundly disabled kids be embedded into mainstream classrooms with no additional teacher resources than there are people insisting that gifted children be forced to “learn to cope” in a regular classroom, although the gifted kid may need just as much extra support to achieve their full potential.

MayMontt
12 days ago

I appreciate this article pointing out that separating gifted kids into special programs doesn’t have a huge impact in the long run. As a former gifted/talented child married to another gifted/talented person (because that’s what it was called in the 80s), I’ve often wondered what happens to us as adults. I remember reading somewhere that exceptional kids don’t always grow up to be exceptional adults. The other kids catch up and sometimes do better because they have a growth mindset and we do not. And then there’s the whole issue of neurodivergence. In the last 10 years, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and it looks like my husband might be AuDHD. Understanding how different brains work seems like a much better way to support all kids, rather than just focusing on who gets labeled as gifted.

And to the point of the other commenter, I’ve noticed in our city, where parents tend to be high achievers, there’s often a big push for their kids to be high achievers, too. While gifted programs aren’t a major focus, language immersion public schools are really popular. A lot of parents want to enroll their kids in these programs as a way to challenge them, which feels like a similar mindset.

SandraFace1000
12 days ago

I don’t know if anyone has had a similar experience as mine but since my daughter was in kindergarten (she’s now in 2nd grade) there’s been a lot of focus within the parent community on who is in gifted and who isn’t. A lot of parents got their children privately tested. When I ask why they push so much for gifted, they are vague on their answers.
On the first day of 2nd grade, the group mom introduced herself to me and out of nowhere she felt the need to add: “my son tested for gifted but we chose not to put him in the program because he wants to focus on baseball.”
My daughter does really well academically but she’s not in the 98 percentile (or whatever the gifted standards are) and I find it so hard that all of these kids are testing so high, just based on how percentiles work there’s seems to be waaay too many gifted kids for a standard population. Either I have the smartest neighbors or getting into gifted just requires really driven, high achieving parents with the money to test outside the school. Is gifted a status thing? Thoughts?

fisherkz@outlook.com
fisherkz@outlook.com
12 days ago
Reply to  SandraFace1000
12 days ago

You sound like you could be in our district. Yeah, high achieving students is definitely a status symbol, especially when there are a lot of wealthy parents who send their kids to advertised elite private schools. (Again , not that they’re better, but status…)So it sort of makes it “okay” for those who opt for public school, *if* you can get them in the specialty gifted program.

My husband and I were also the product of gifted programs in the 80s and 90s, and there were some clear benefits: namely, peer groups where it was okay to be “nerdy” and you could be proud of your achievements instead of having to hide them so you didn’t get made fun of or worse, bullied. You would also rise to the standard set by your peers–quality work, challenging yourself to grow. That said, the perfectionism and “who’s better” comparisons are pressure cookers, and I’m still working with my therapist decades later to unravel unhealthy behaviors and attitudes I absorbed that negatively impact my mental and now physical health. The sweet spot seems to be a hybrid pull out program where kids get to do enrichment projects with a like minded peer group a few times a week–enough to be challenged and generate shared friendships and bonds–but not all-immersive where the kids can lose perspective on the values of what is “normal.” But I’m not a PhD in childhood development. Just a mom of a similarly gifted kid on the cusp in a high-achieving geographic bubble, faced with the decision of what to do for our own.

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