Now is the time for solutions, not ideology

Students come from diverse backgrounds, speak different languages, have different strengths and personal challenges, and have had very different preschool and family experiences. Far too many are denied access to opportunity based on where they live or the color of their skin. It was within this complex context that the authors of the December/January special issue explored ways to improve the education of advanced learners. Nearly every article was critical of the current state of affairs, but more importantly, offered research-based suggestions for moving forward. Further, they offered options intended to achieve the goal of providing challenging education for all students rather than disenfranchising one group at the expense of another.

Sadly, this same commitment to evidence and practical progress was not shared in Professor Allison Roda’s recent commentary on the December/January issue. She takes issue with the very concept of giftedness and recommends eliminating all gifted education programming (and presumably all advanced programming) based on her observations of and experiences in New York City.

We initially struggled to craft this commentary because we had many objections to Roda’s arguments and pages of notes on research that strongly rebuts those arguments. How to boil all that down to a brief commentary? But then we realized that there is already a well-crafted compendium of that thinking: The December/January issue of the Kappan on Finding and Developing Talented Youth.