Dive Brief:
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School districts’ policies for supporting and identifying advanced students “are mediocre at best,” researchers wrote in a study released Tuesday by the Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education policy think tank.
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While 89% of districts offer some form of gifted programming for elementary or middle school students, the Fordham study found these courses are limited and have questionable content value. Researchers found high schools are more likely to provide substantial advanced programming, though prerequisites can be a barrier to student access at times.
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The Fordham study recommends that schools offer more intensive advanced programming while incorporating more inclusive identification strategies based on local norms, like relying, for instance, on where a student’s test score falls within their school or district instead of state or national comparisons.
Dive Insight:
Fordham’s findings come as schools work to reform their gifted and talented programs and offer more access to advanced courses, especially for students of color, students from low-income families, and students with disabilities.
Universal screening also appears to be gaining traction as a better means of identifying gifted students, with a majority (87%) of the 581 surveyed district and charter school administrators reporting they look at student performance on a cognitive ability assessment, the Fordham study found.
This isn’t the first research to identify universal screeners as a more successful identification tool for gifted programs over teacher and parent referrals. An October guide from NWEA, an educational research and assessment company, also suggested that districts use other data points — such as grades and other student information — in addition to widespread assessments.
However, districts still commonly rely on referrals from teachers (81%) and parents (68%) when identifying advanced learners, according to the survey conducted between May and October 2023. Less than half of districts said they were likely to use course grades, student portfolios or peer nominations for identification. District use of student interviews and auditions were even more rare.
Half of the administrators surveyed said gifted learners are automatically enrolled in more advanced courses if they’ve participated in advanced education classes before — whether that be at the elementary, middle or high school level. Some 31% of districts don’t require any prerequisites to enroll in an Advanced Placement course in high school.
When using more local norm factors to identify gifted students, Fordham researchers also recommend that districts select at least 5% to 10% of eligible students per school.
In scenarios where districts rely on how a student falls along a national student test score distribution to determine their eligibility for advanced education programs, the Fordham study said that approach can be restrictive to the needs of socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.
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