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.
Rather than address the comments point-by-point, we encourage readers to refer to the articles, in which the authors address the issues raised by Roda — often with significantly greater research support. She dismisses these articles in her commentary, but where those authors propose research-based solutions for addressing the many issues surrounding advanced learning and talent development, she doesn’t appropriately acknowledge the positive outcomes that should result from the authors’ recommendations or, more to the point, offer workable alternatives.
We focus on two broad assertions in the commentary that are unconvincing. First, she implies throughout that gifted programs cause achievement gaps. But those gaps are apparent from the first moment students arrive at school and are well-established when most forms of advanced education tend to start (usually around 3rd or 4th grade). It feels more than a little disingenuous to condemn advanced education programs for not fixing pre-existing gaps caused by staggering levels of institutional racism and social inequality, and that social programs, preschool, and early education programs also haven’t been able to fix.
But at least we agree on the problem, even if we disagree on some of the causes: inequality in opportunity, resources, and preparation. So how to address them? Here again our perspectives diverge. Rather than give careful consideration to the research-based recommendations offered by the special issue authors (many specifically related to narrowing excellence gaps), she offers a very different solution, arguing for, “dismantling separate GT programs and integrating all students into mixed-ability classrooms, where differentiated teaching should be provided to diverse learners based on the inclusive special education model.” But it remains unclear to us how removing advanced learning opportunities will mitigate inequality or lift up students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Roda shares little empirical evidence to support her preferences. Is there anyone who doesn’t want all teachers to provide personalized, equitable differentiation for all learners? But the research not only calls the feasibility of this ideal into question, it provides insight into why such differentiation exacts a cost for advanced students, such as almost nonexistent teacher and principal preparation on advanced learners (Plucker et al., 2018; Rinn et al., 2020), huge ranges in student performance levels within most classrooms (Peters et al., 2017; Rambo-Hernandez et al., 2020), and significant resource limitations in most rural and urban schools. The history of the past 25-plus years, during which differentiation has been touted as a panacea, provides little evidence that all the attention and resources devoted to supporting mixed-ability differentiation has led to positive benefits for advanced learners.
We grant Roda that other interventions which she advocates, specifically models such as Complex Instruction and the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM), are useful for classroom instruction, but we fail to find clear, replicated evidence that relying on these in mixed-ability classrooms ensures that all students are appropriately challenged. Indeed, even a recent advocacy piece endorsing the use of the Complex Instruction approach with gifted students did not cite efficacy research (see Tomlinson, 2018). In our article, we noted the potential for SEM to show positive impacts on advanced student learning, but it has not been tested across multiple delivery models nor has it been independently validated.
Roda’s experience seems to stem from an almost exclusive focus on New York City (NYC). Yes, NYC’s situation is inexcusable, and many of the article authors have been saying so for years. Ironically, the NYC situation is also the best evidence that Roda’s preferred course of action will never work. When the current approach to gifted education was adopted in the city a generation ago, it resulted in widespread elimination of advanced programming in most schools outside of Manhattan. As a result, privileged families got more privilege, disadvantaged families were out of luck, and diversity was virtually eliminated from the city’s selective high schools, which up to that point had been quite diverse. The current situation in New York City is the result of the basic approach for which Roda is advocating. There’s a reason that community leaders in the Bronx and Brooklyn are fighting to reestablish advanced learning programs in their schools!
It has become fashionable to wax philosophic about the need to address equity in advanced learning by eliminating advanced learning programs. As we review in our paper — and several other authors in the issue also note — we need to focus on what works and how to make it work for more students — particularly students of color. But the idea that every students’ needs will be met in the same classroom, with teachers differentiating effectively for six or more grade-levels’ worth of student performance, despite any convincing evidence they can do so consistently and at scale, is an ideological fantasy that will harm far more students than it helps.
We’d find this and similar commentaries to be more authentic if they dispensed with the allusions to research and were more direct about their true nature: Ideological beliefs on how the commentators wish the world to be, rather than good-faith efforts to find ways to create that world.
References
Peters, S.J., Makel, M.C., Matthews, M.S., Rambo-Hernandez, K E., & Plucker, J.A. (2017). Should millions of students take a gap year? Large numbers of students start the school year above grade level. Gifted Child Quarterly, 61, 229-238.
Plucker, J.A., Callahan, C.M., Gluck, S., & Rodriguez, C. (2020). Inclusion of academically advanced (gifted) students. In J. M. Kauffman (Ed.), On educational inclusion: Meanings, history, issues, and international perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge.
Plucker, J.A., Glynn, J., Healey, G., & Dettmer, A. (2018). Equal talents, unequal opportunities: A report card on state support for academically talented low-income students (2nd ed.). Lansdowne, VA: Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.excellencegap.org/.
Rambo-Hernandez, K. Makel, M.C., Peters, S. J., & Plucker, J.A. (2020). Researchers estimate that students coming back after COVID-19 closures may have greater variance in academic skills. Portland, OR: NWEA.
Rinn, A.N., Mun, R.U., & Hodges, J. (2020). 2018-2019 State of the states in gifted education. Washington, DC: National Association of Gifted Children and the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted. https://www.nagc.org/2018-2019-state-states-gifted-education
Tomlinson, C.A. (2018). Complex Instruction: A model for reaching up—and out. Gifted Child Today, 41(1), 7-12.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Carolyn M. Callahan
CAROLYN M. CALLAHAN is Commonwealth Professor of Education Emeritus at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and has been principal investigator on projects of the National Center for Research on Gifted Education. She and Jonathan A. Plucker are the authors of Critical Issues and Practices in Gifted Education .
Jonathan A. Plucker
JONATHAN A. PLUCKER is the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development at the Center for Talented Youth and a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. He serves as president of the National Association for Gifted Children.
