‘You could have your students write tweets as if they were Martin Luther King Jr.,” said the educational consultant leading our professional development workshop.
I frowned to myself, which is what I find myself doing quite frequently in sessions like this. We were being taught different classroom strategies that would help us to engage our students and, more important, differentiate our instruction. Teachers are always asked to “differentiate.” We must teach the same lesson to students of varying ability using methods of instruction attuned to the needs of each student.
It can get pretty tricky. We’re bombarded with professional development sessions, online resources, and word-of-mouth tips on how to teach students with learning disabilities, at lower reading levels, and from non-English-speaking backgrounds. What we are not often asked to do is make a lesson more challenging for a truly gifted student.
Moreover, writing 140-character blurbs that don’t even need to be full sentences is geared toward a lower-level student (or teacher!) who may find tweeting more “relevant,” interesting, and easier than reading and analyzing a King speech. I can’t imagine high-achieving, academically gifted students benefiting from such activity, and I am pretty sure that students in other countries—who we always seem to be trailing—are not being distracted by time-wasting activities. When was the last time you read about Chinese students writing status updates for Chairman Mao’s Facebook wall?
Chester Finn and Brandon Wright must have been asking themselves this very question, for they have gathered together a vast amount of information about the education of gifted students in America. But first, amazingly, they find themselves having to defend the idea that policymakers should focus on gifted students at all: It’s certainly more in vogue to discuss “educational equity” and devote resources to students who are struggling to read at grade level.
Gifted students, however, are most likely to make major strides in “science, technology, medicine, the humanities, and much more.” These are the future leaders of America. Finn and Wright give us a wealth of statistics (including comparing our high-achieving students with those in 11 other countries) to prove that we need to be focusing more attention on gifted students—especially those from minority or underprivileged backgrounds—in order for our workforce to remain competitive.
Did you know, for example, that foreign applicants to American business schools (particularly applicants from India and China) are doing much better on the quantitative portion of the GMAT than their American counterparts? And as a result, some business school admissions offices have decided to compare American applicants only with other Americans because the Americans don’t stand a chance against their international competitors?
Once Finn and Wright make the case for why gifted students need to be educated, they look at the challenges that come with educating this population, such as our ideological disagreements over how to identify a gifted student (it varies from school district to school district), the weaknesses of gifted programs (there’s no good way to measure the efficacy of the programs and there’s a lot of bad—and outdated—data floating around), and how “differentiated” instruction can make it difficult for teachers to spend enough time on the students who are most academically talented.
Add to the mix the fact that the political lobby for gifted students is practically nonexistent, and that parents who want to push “on behalf of their own kids often have options beyond what’s offered by the school system,” and the outlook for gifted education looks bleak.
We must “place this topic firmly on the policy agenda,” the authors write, “and rekindle the debate about how to have a society that prizes excellence as well as equity.” But as obvious as this may sound to some, it’s a tough cause to sell. Many education schools and education policy wonks are much more interested in what they call providing an “equal” education for all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, and ability.
Yet this notion of equity does not extend to gifted students. The vast majority of course offerings at education school is geared toward teaching the lower end of the spectrum, to close the achievement gap between minority or lower-income students and their peers from whiter, richer neighborhoods. And when the achievement gap does narrow, it’s because lower-level students are making gains while gifted students are stagnant.
Improving the performance of low-achieving kids is something to be proud of, for sure. But it doesn’t bring America’s brightest students to the level of their peers in other countries. And it’s difficult to persuade a politician to take up what is considered an elitist cause that doesn’t have significant political clout.
Failing Our Brightest Kids is not a guidebook for teachers. I did not come away with lesson plans or ideas on how to improve my 10th-grade world history course for my most gifted students. But policymakers and politicians who are willing to take risks to improve our education system for all our students should read this book. And then tweet about it.
Anne Continetti teaches history at the Madeira School.
