How talented low-income kids are left behind

Abstract

Finding and developing talented youth from low-income backgrounds is an ongoing challenge for U.S. gifted education policy. These students face strong headwinds, whereas advantaged students enjoy favorable tailwinds, and these factors accumulate throughout K-12, higher education, and beyond. Jonathan Wai and Frank C. Worrell explain how talented low income kids are left behind. They discuss the historical tension between the development of excellence and the pursuit of equity, explain the importance of early and universal talent identification and development in the critical K-12 years, and link that development to students’ personal success and societal growth.

Keywords

low income talent development gifted education identification screening reform policy equity excellence college success

Identifying academically gifted students early in their education will put them on track to greater success, to the benefit of society as a whole.

Americans have always celebrated the idea that if all children — including those born into poverty — have the chance to achieve to their fullest capacity, then we all stand to benefit from their accomplishments. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788:

By that part of our plan which prescribes the selection of the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.

In recent decades, federal policy makers have often amplified Jefferson’s message, arguing that we need to find and support greater numbers of high-performing students, both to ensure our national security and to strengthen our economy. Further, since 1988, the federal government has funded research and grants to support programs for “gifted and talented” students.

However, our investments haven’t matched our ideals. In the mid-1990s, for instance, researchers Camilla Benbow and Julian Stanley (1996) pointed out that the federal K-12 education budget allocated just 0.0002% for gifted and talented education. “Our nation’s brightest youngsters, those most likely to be headed for selective colleges, have suffered dramatic setbacks over the past two decades,” they wrote. “This has grave implications for our country’s ability to compete economically with other industrialized nations” (p. 250). Twenty years later, gifted education still received a microscopically small fraction of the federal education budget — just a single dollar out of every $500,000 spent (Wai & Worrell, 2016). Meanwhile, policy makers’ attention to this issue has declined as well, all but disappearing from federal debates about education spending.

We believe that this decades-long underinvestment in gifted education has weakened our country by withholding much-needed support from young people who might have made important contributions to our economy, culture, and society at large. Further, it has caused us to neglect the personal well-being of countless students who should have been given opportunities to develop their talents. But even more important, and as we argue below, this failure to invest properly in gifted education has made it more difficult than ever for our public schools to identify, as Jefferson put it, “youths of genius from among the classes of the poor.”

The gifted education gap

A number of recent studies suggest that talented kids who come from low-income backgrounds are less likely, compared to similarly talented but more affluent peers, to reach their full potential (e.g., Hoxby & Avery, 2013; Olszewski-Kubilius & Clarenbach, 2012; Plucker & Peters, 2016; Wyner, Bridgeland, & DiIulio, 2007). For instance, in a recent study of 482,418 gifted 7th graders who took the ACT in 7th grade and again in high school, the academic gains for students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds were significantly smaller than for other groups of gifted kids (Wai & Allen, 2019). So how can we narrow this divide between talented low-income and high-income students? One solution is early identification and talent development.

It may seem counterintuitive, but standardized tests appear to be more effective than more subjective measures in selecting students who are ready for more advanced schooling .

It’s hard to develop students’ talents if we don’t identify them accurately and at an early enough point to affect their K-12 educational trajectory. This is especially important for gifted low-income students, who do not have the financial advantages that would enable them to access additional educational opportunities and must rely on whatever their local public schools offer them (Assouline et al., 2015; Wai et al., 2010). And, too often, talented but low-income students are simply not being identified systematically (Card & Giuliano, 2016) through methods such as universal screening using standardized measures (Dynarski, 2018).

It may seem counterintuitive, but standardized tests appear to be more effective than more subjective measures in selecting students who are ready for more advanced schooling — the key is that such testing must done universally, not relying on referrals from teachers, parents, or other adults. When gifted identification is left to the discretion of parents and teachers, it turns out that more low-income and minority children are missed (Grissom & Redding, 2016). Although some might fear that these tests are unfair because unequal opportunities may lead to unequal math and verbal reasoning test scores, the evidence base suggests that developed math and verbal reasoning abilities, as demonstrated on standardized tests, are an important reflection of what students are ready for (Lohman 2005a, 2005b). Research has shown that students can best build their skills and improve their talent development by being matched to curriculum where their current developed abilities place them, also known as appropriate developmental placement (Lubinski & Benbow, 2000). And it appears that universal screening actually is more, rather than less, helpful in objectively identifying talented but disadvantaged students (Card & Giuliano, 2016).

Moreover, recent research has shown that comparing students’ test performance to other students within the same school and using that as the method for identification — what is known as using “local norms” — results in more disadvantaged students being identified (Peters et al., 2019). For example, using local norms instead of national ones improved Latinx and Black representation in gifted programs in 10 states by 170% and 300%, respectively. (See, Peters, Carter, & Plucker in this issue for more details on this and other identification methods.)

When schools identify students, especially disadvantaged students, needing more advanced opportunities early in their K-12 educational development, they can provide the most educationally stimulating opportunities possible right from the start, enabling these students to develop to their fullest potential. Our view is similar to that of Scott Peters and colleagues, who suggest in this issue that placement in gifted programs be flexible, with students

moving in and out as their developmental needs change based on universal testing and local norms. The accumulation of opportunities over the K-12 years will give these students the best chance available to compete for admission to prestigious colleges, which will put them on track to greater success as adults.

Gifted education, college, and future success

In K-12 education, gifted education can take many forms. It can be the gifted and talented program in elementary school, participating in the MATHCOUNTS state or national competition in middle school, or being admitted to a selective or specialized high school. Selective or elite colleges or “honors colleges” at large public institutions are, essentially, forms of gifted education in higher education, as illustrated by the high test scores of such selective institutions (Wai, Brown, & Chabris, 2018). The problem is that, for decades, such schools have primarily served students whose parents have consistently marshalled their resources toward the goal of elite college admission, whether through education, community service, sports, and other opportunities needed to develop a well-rounded package to impress admission committees. The competition for college, in particular highly selective colleges, is quite intense, often requiring years of planning, résumé building, and parental investment. Without early identification and consistent talent development, low-income gifted students are likely to remain at a disadvantage.

Although the representation of talented but low-income students at selective colleges has improved somewhat since the 1970s, it has improved even more for talented but high-income students (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2017). In fact, researchers have found that academically advanced low-income students are less likely than their high-income peers even to apply to selective colleges and universities (Hoxby & Avery, 2013). And it is these selective colleges that often serve as gateways to positions of leadership and influence in U.S. society.

People who end up in positions of national and global leadership, it turns out, often attended and graduated from highly selective colleges and universities. In fact, roughly half of the country’s political and economic leaders come from a small set of elite schools (Wai, 2013). Thus, the disadvantages accumulate for low-income students. Lacking access to the prestige associated with graduating from an elite school and the networking opportunities such schools provide, these students are largely shut out of top jobs and the loftiest positions of power (Rivera, 2016).

Longitudinal research on the gifted from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (Lubinski & Benbow, 2000, 2006, 2020) shows that gifted students who have their talents optimally developed earn doctorates, achieve university tenure, obtain patents, and publish academic journal articles as well as fiction and nonfiction books at rates two to eight times higher than the general population (Kell, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2013; Park, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2007).

These students’ success yields benefits for more than the students themselves. Research into the top fraction of achievers in different countries illustrates that promoting intellectual development among the most cognitively gifted has a long-term impact on a country’s gross domestic product (Rindermann & Thompson, 2011). Similarly, research by James Heckman (2000) found greater long-term economic and societal returns on investment in high-ability students relative to lower-ability students, particularly at an early age.

Small investment, big impact

Talented but disadvantaged students who can marshal their internal resources may be able to overcome environments of disadvantage (Damian et al., 2014). But these students face strong headwinds, whereas their more advantaged peers enjoy favorable tailwinds (Stevens, 2020).

Universal screening for early talent identification coupled with universal opportunities for consistent academic challenge and development throughout K-12 education (e.g., Wai et al., 2010) would do a great deal to help talented but disadvantaged students develop to the fullest. Not only would investing in talented students from the beginning of their education help these students flourish personally (Moon, 2009), it would also help resolve the ongoing tension between equity and excellence in education (Benbow & Stanley, 1996; Gardner, 1961; Loveless, 2014). At the same time, even a small early investment in talented students from poor backgrounds has the potential to greatly boost societal innovation and the economy, improving life for us all. Surely such an effort is worth it.

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