Putting the highest-achieving kids in one classroom isn't supported by everyone in education. Separating students could raise test scores, but it's controversial In other words, the gifted program ended up providing the biggest test score boost to kids who weren't really supposed to be there in the first place. The impact was larger for students who are racial minorities or from disadvantaged backgrounds, the students least likely to be admitted to a gifted program based on IQ alone. Students with high test scores but lower IQs - the kids who got the leftover seats - saw a significant improvement in their standardized test scores. And those students said they were less satisfied at school after testing into the gifted class, so it's not clear that they were getting other benefits from being grouped with smarter peers. The researchers found this more troubling, because those students' scores weren't as high coming in as the first group's. Students with disadvantaged backgrounds who were admitted based on IQ tests also didn't see a huge bump. And they were more likely to say they were satisfied at school after they moved to the new classroom - suggesting that the gifted class had a positive effect by helping students who were bored or disengaged before. They didn't usually need help with basic reading and math.
Their test scores were high to begin with. For the students with IQs of at least 130, that's not surprising. The gifted classroom had little to no effect on the standardized test scores of students admitted based on their IQ. Standardized test scores went up most for students who weren't selected based on IQ. The effects (or lack thereof) of gifted education It turns out that those high-achieving kids, who don't score as gifted at all on an IQ test, benefit the most academically from being in a gifted classroom. They turn to "high achievers," students with high scores on statewide standardized tests the previous years. So schools have to find other kids to fill the remaining seats in gifted classrooms. Most schools have fewer than 10 students in the fourth grade who meet those criteria, and classes need to have at least 20 students. But the bar is high to be classified as gifted: Students who aren't from disadvantaged backgrounds have to have an IQ of at least 130 students who are learning English or who are from poor families can meet a slightly lower bar, an IQ of higher than 116.Īnd so gifted kids are rare. (They don't name the district, but it's likely in Florida, based on the description they give of the district's size and its policies.)īeginning in fourth grade, elementary schools in the district have separate classrooms for gifted students, rather than occasionally pulling them out of class for enrichment activities. The researchers, David Card from the University of California-Berkeley and Laura Giuliano from the University of Miami, studied classrooms in a large school district with an unusual method of educating gifted students. So gifted programs have to find ways to fill the rest of the seats in a separate classroom. Instead, they're students who scored well on standardized tests in previous years. Should students be picked based on their IQ alone, given that IQ scores fluctuate and correlate heavily with race and family income? Or should other factors play a role?Ī new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found that the students who benefit the most from gifted classrooms are students who aren't gifted at all - at least, not as measured by intelligence tests. If a school offers separate classes for gifted students, one of the most difficult questions is who should be allowed in and who can benefit.
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