Response to Peters: Promising Practices and a Missing Piece

Universal Screening

Universal screening is a practice that can benefit all students, not just those labeled gifted, but the devil is in the details. Peters (2021) reviews research showing that universal screening is helpful for identifying high-potential students often missed with typical identification protocols. Yet, as was demonstrated by Card and Guiliano (2016) in one of the most significant studies on the topic, universal screening will only be effective at discerning potential if combined with generous cutoffs or local norms. Authors of another recent large-scale study of identification within three states did not find greater parity in identification with universal screening, although they did not examine the specifics of implementation in this study, which likely varied considerably across schools (Long & Gubbins, 2021).

Therefore, although a promising strategy, considerably more research is needed to identify how universal screening will work—practically, efficiently, and effectively—within varied school settings. For example, what might work for very young children who do not yet have significant subject-area exposure may not work for students with disabilities. Additionally, educators will need guidance on how to view data to determine advanced potential, set appropriate screening cutoffs for their population, and capitalize on existing achievement data so as to reduce the obstacles to implementation caused by increased costs, as noted by Card and Guiliano (2016).

Gifted education researchers must work side-by-side with schools to study various implementations of universal screening and share results with the broader community. Often in education, implementation precedes research, leading to poor results and premature abandonment. Additionally and critically, the research by Card and Guiliano (2016) shows that universal screening improved equitable identification only modestly and must be combined with other approaches as discussed below.

Local Norms

Research has shown the efficacy of using local instead of national norms to identify students who need a curriculum that is more advanced than what is available in their schools (Peters et al., 2019). Using local norms, especially at the school level, will, as Peters (2021) points out, broaden and diversify the students who receive services but also will require different program models, particularly in the cases where the school also serves students who already meet existing gifted identification criteria. One caveat we would like to highlight here is that the goal of employing local norms is to provide programs that build skills and knowledge so students can meet national norms required for advanced courses at the middle and secondary level. This goal is important because most programming in gifted education in the United States fails students with extremely low-dose programming that is disconnected from core academic content (NAGC State of the States Report 2018-2019, www.nagc.org/2018-2019-state-states-gifted-education).

Project Excite is an example of rigorous frontloading, a model Peters (2021) promotes in his essay. It consisted of over 400 hours of outside-of school learning in STEM for students of color delivered in Grades 3 through 8 with the specific goal of raising achievement so students could accelerate in math and qualify for honors and advanced classes in high school. By Grade 7, students matched the achievement levels of the highest scoring students in the district in math and reading (Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2017).

Project OCCAMS (Online Curriculum Consortium for Advanced Middle School Students) identifies children whose test scores are below state requirements in Grade 6 and provides a hybrid English/Language Arts (ELA) curriculum that compresses Grades 7-9 ELA into 2 years. By the end of Grade 8, the OCCAMS students’ scores on a required ELA 9th grade assessment exceeded those of the district average and the highest performing high school in the district (Calvert et al., 2018). What do these two successful programs have in common? Students were identified via local norms followed by substantial programming within core subject areas specifically aimed at raising achievement from local to national levels.

A Missing Piece

Getting underrepresented students into gifted services is half the battle. The other is retaining them (Worrell & Dixson, 2018). Once finding themselves in a more selective environment, students often experience questions about legitimacy of their participation in the program, lower teacher expectations, and isolation from friends. They also may be afraid of failure and letting down those who supported them. These very real concerns can be addressed by introducing psychosocial skills that have been used successfully with performers to reduce anxiety about loss of self-confidence and setbacks from trying challenging activities (Olszewski-Kubilius et al., 2019; Subotnik, 2015; Subotnik et al., 2019). Research has shown that small interventions can influence motivation and approaches to school and academic tasks (Oyserman & Destin, 2010) and psychosocial skills, such as mindsets that affect academic achievement, are malleable and can be fostered by teachers (Farrington et al., 2012). Psychosocial skills and motivations that affect achievement are best developed by teachers within the contexts of the opportunities they provide and as an integral component of learning opportunities for high potential students.

Finally, we wholeheartedly agree with Peters (2021) that the solution to the problem of inequities is not to eliminate gifted programs but rather to ensure that promising practices are implemented carefully and thoughtfully, evaluated and revised accordingly, and combined with programming that starts early and is substantial, content focused, and designed to move students forward on their talent development paths.