Society's Role in Educating Gifted Students: The Role of Public Policy
As part of the Senior Scholars Series of publications from the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, James J. Gallagher examines the social and political policies that affect the quality and kind of educational experiences available to our nation's gifted students. In Nation at Risk, researchers found that gifted students had mastered 35-50% of the curriculum offered in the five basic subjects before they even begin the school year. In addition, it was observed that few teachers make provisions to differentiate instruction for talented students. From the admission by high school students listed in Who's Who Among American Students that they studied less than one hour per day to obtain top grades on a standard curriculum, to the fiscal reality that only two cents out of every hundred dollars spent on education in the U.S. was targeted to support special opportunities for gifted students, Gallagher provides a historical glimpse of our nation's continuing failure to educate our best and brightest.
The social and political policies for the past decades have been ineffective in changing this trend. In recent studies, researchers continue to find little differentiation in the instructional and curricular practices. Even more alarming, in comparing American students to their international counterparts in the TIMMS report (U.S. Department of Education, 1998), gifted students in advanced placement classes, such as calculus and physics, were only capable of performing at the level of average students in other countries.
Gallagher's research examines the social and public policies that determine who receives resources in education, how they are delivered, what special resources are provided, and what conditions govern the delivery of resources. These policies determine the fates of many gifted children by either expanding or restricting opportunities. The ambivalence of the American society to gifted students is reviewed in this monograph and is a must-read for parents and teachers alike.
