In 1971, researchers at Johns Hopkins University embarked on an ambitious effort to identify brilliant 12-year-olds and track their education and careers through the rest of their lives. The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, which now includes 5,000 people, would eventually become the world’s longest-running longitudinal survey of what happens to intellectually talented children (in math and other areas) as they grow up. It has generated seven books, more than 300 papers, and a lot of what we know about early aptitude.
David Lubinski is a psychologist at Vanderbilt University, where the project has been based since the 1990s. He and his wife and fellow Vanderbilt professor, Camilla Benbow, codirect the study and have dedicated their careers to learning about this exceptional population.
“This is like putting a magnifying glass on the tippy, tippy top of the distribution,” he says.
In a recent paper, Lubinski and his colleagues caught up with one cohort of 320 people now in their late 30s. At 12, their SAT math or verbal scores had placed them among the top one-100th of 1 percent. Today, many are CEOs, professors at top research universities, transplant surgeons, and successful novelists.
That outcome sounds like exactly what you’d imagine should happen: Top young people grow into high-achieving adults. In the education world, the study has provided important new evidence that it really is possible to identify the kids who are likely to become exceptional achievers in the future, something previous research has not always found to be the case. But for that reason, perhaps surprisingly, it has also triggered a new round of worry.
Lubinski’s unusually successful cohort was also a lucky group from the start—they participated in the study in the first place because their parents or teachers encouraged them to take the SAT at age 12. Previous research into gifted children has shown that many, or even most of them, aren’t so lucky: They aren’t identified early, and they don’t necessarily get special attention from their schools. Even among Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth participants, the Vanderbilt researchers have previously found that those who weren’t challenged in school were less likely to live up to the potential indicated by their test scores. Other research has shown that under-stimulated gifted students quickly become bored and frustrated—especially if they come from low-income families that are not equipped to provide them with enrichment outside of school.
“What the study underscored is the tremendous amount of potential here—they’re a national resource,” Lubinski says. “But it’s hard to separate the findings of this study from what we know about gifted kids in general. The genuine concern is, we know we’re not identifying all of this population. We’re not getting nearly enough, and we’re losing them.”
To people more worried about kids who are falling through the cracks altogether, doing slightly less than we could for the most gifted might not seem like a pressing problem. But if the study is right that exceptional youthful ability really does correlate directly with exceptional adult achievement, then these talented young kids aren’t just a challenge for schools and parents: they’re also demonstrably important to America’s future. And it means that if, in education, we focus on steering all extra money and attention toward kids who are struggling academically, or even just to the average student, we risk shortchanging the country in a different way.
“We are in a talent war, and we’re living in a global economy now,” Lubinski says. “These are the people who are going to figure out all the riddles. Schizophrenia, cancer—they’re going to fight terrorism, they’re going to create patents and the scientific innovations that drive our economy. But they are not given a lot of opportunities in schools that are designed for typically developing kids.”
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Given all the pressures our education system faces, it seems almost indecent to worry about the travails of a small minority of very smart children. Understandably, federal and state education policy has long focused on more obvious problems that education can help address—problems such as the yawning gaps between the test scores of rich and poor students and between different racial groups. Tax dollars disproportionately go to help kids with learning disabilities and other disadvantages, because society generally agrees that they are most in need of help.
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, which penalizes public schools that don’t bring the lowest-performing students up to grade level. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act regulates special education and provides schools with more than $11 billion annually. A provision of federal education law called Title I allocates some $14 billion to schools that have a higher proportion of students from low-income families, to pay for programs designed to keep them from falling behind.
The smartest kid in class, by contrast, is not an expensive problem. A boy or girl who finishes an assignment early can be handed a book and told to read quietly while the teacher works on getting other children caught up. What would clearly be neglect if it happened to a special-needs child tends to look different if the child is gifted: Being left alone might even feel like a reward, an acknowledgment of being a fast learner.
Not surprisingly, programs oriented toward gifted children get barely any federal funding. The Javits Act, the only federal law aimed at gifted students, pays for research and pilot education programs and is currently funded at $5 million, down from a peak of $11 million several years ago.
Gifted students do have their own advocacy group, the National Association for Gifted Children. This coalition of parents and educators is currently pushing a bipartisan bill called the Talent Act, which would require states and school districts to set policies for gifted education and report on the performance of advanced students. (In a concession to reality, the act does not seek any new funding.) The group’s former president, Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, says that in an ideal world the federal government would require that gifted students be identified early and would fund schools’ efforts to train teachers and provide enrichment or accelerated learning programs.
Olszewski-Kubilius, an education professor at Northwestern University, considers the latest Vanderbilt finding important to the cause. “It’s probably the best research we have that connects childhood giftedness with adult achievement,” she says. She chalks up the current disparity to an otherwise well-intentioned attitude, one that seems to be ingrained in American culture.
“There’s a fundamental belief, not just among educators but in general in our society—and the word ‘gifted’ doesn’t help—that, well, they lucked out by virtue of genetics. They’ve got something other people don’t have, and so they should just be satisfied with that. They don’t need any more.”
Research, however, suggests that they do—or at least that they benefit from extra investment. Two recent papers based on data from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth and published in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that, among young people with off-the-charts ability, those who had been given special accommodations—even modest ones, like being allowed to skip a grade, enroll in special classes, or take college-level courses in high school—went on to publish more academic papers, earn more patents, and pursue higher-level careers than their equally smart peers who didn’t have these opportunities. In one of the studies, the Vanderbilt researchers matched students who skipped a grade with a control group of similarly smart kids who didn’t. The grade-skippers, it turned out, were 60 percent more likely to earn doctorates or patents and more than twice as likely to get a PhD in science, math, or engineering.
“If you look at the control group” in the grade-skipping study, says Lubinski, “they’ll say, ‘The curriculum was moving too slow, I felt bored, I was frustrated.’ Those kids still do better than the norm, but the ones who have their developmental needs met, they do much better.”
But providing these smart kids with an education that matches their abilities is not as straightforward as it sounds. Politically, it raises the fraught question of whether our education system should be in the business of identifying and segregating elite students—an idea that has been tried and rejected before, for good reasons.
For most of the 20th century, schools routinely divided students into advanced, average, and remedial categories, a practice called “tracking” that was largely discredited by research showing it only exacerbated inequality, especially inequality linked to race and class.
“The original basis was the idea that some people are born to lead and others are born to follow, so you identify the leaders early and train them to lead,” says Samuel Lucas, a Berkeley sociologist whose research has focused on inequality in education. Those who were groomed to be followers, he notes, consistently wound up with worse teachers, scarcer supplies, and a weaker curriculum than their more advanced peers.
“It’s difficult to introduce stratification into the system without introducing inequality in how people get into those stratifications,” Lucas says. “Students at the bottom should be getting the best of resources so they can catch up. They certainly shouldn’t be getting worse resources, and the research shows that this is what happens.”
While he is not opposed to programs that identify and serve gifted children, Lucas warns that any such effort will be gamed by more well-to-do parents, angling to get their children in, then fighting to ensure the gifted group gets better teachers, newer technology, and other advantages. Great care would be required, he says, so as not to “end up with another system for those at the top to reinforce that they belong there.”
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While equity at the classroom level is important, Lubinski and others who study the gifted say that the issue goes beyond education to national competitiveness. “We’re living in a global economy now,” Lubinski says, “and there are only very few people of any discipline who push the frontiers of knowledge forward. This is the population who you’d do well to bet on.”
Other countries are already making that bet. Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have national laws requiring that children be screened for giftedness, with top scorers funneled into special programs. China is midway through a 10-year “National Talent Development Plan” to steer bright young people into science, technology, and other in-demand fields. In a 2010 speech announcing the scheme, former President Hu Jintao called talent “the most important resource and...a key issue that concerns the development of the Party and country.”
In a democracy, such central planning may be as distasteful as the notion of shifting resources away from kids who need them. Advocates for the gifted, aware of those concerns, are trying to find ways for us to develop our own native talent without exacerbating inequality.
One fix they tend to focus on is investing in early childhood education for all: Olszewski-Kubilius points out that expanding access to preschool would allow teachers to identify kids with the most potential before they even get to kindergarten. Requiring regular screening of all kids from elementary to high school would catch those whose talents emerge later than their peers’, as well as smart kids whose parents aren’t savvy enough to advocate for them.
Other education researchers propose gearing the entire curriculum toward the highest-achieving students, with extra time outside of class for their less-talented peers to catch up. It’s an idea that Adam Gamoran, president of the youth-focused William T. Grant Foundation and a former University of Wisconsin sociologist, says could address the issue of inequality without holding back high achievers.
Regardless of how we choose to deal with the gifted, it’s a challenge that seems more acute as we learn more about this population.
“How many people can become an astrophysicist or a PhD in chemistry?” Lubinski says, comparing it to playing in the NFL or playing at Carnegie Hall. “We really have to look for the best—that’s what we do in the Olympics, that’s what we do in music, and that’s what we need to with intellectual capital.”
Amy Crawford has written for Boston Magazine, Smithsonian, and Slate. Follow her on Twitter @amymcrawf.
This article addresses a serious issue. In many communities, the public schools are reluctant to even admit that there are gifted children. My son, for example, was ready to study algebra in the 6th grade but his math teacher and principal resisted teaching him algebra. We eventually had to pull him from the public schools in our town so that he could get access to advanced math and science courses in a private school. This was extremely expensive for our family. My son is now conducting important biomedical research as an adult, no thanks to our local public schools.
G/T instruction falls into two areas, enrichment or acceleration. While many schools can offer enrichment, very few (in Massachusetts) ascribe to acceleration...meaning you 5th grade kid goes up to the 8th grade to learn math or your 3rd grader takes reading with the 6th graders and then comes back to class for other subjects.
And simply vacating to the private schools doesn't solve the problem either, since most follow a classical curricular model and acceleration isn't necessarily a guarantee. While they demand rigor, that doesn't always translate into true acceleration of curriculum.
I am so sick of this argument. Public schools, unlike private schools, MUST educate EVERY child. They are not allowed to cherry pick who they teach and are working with smaller budgets every year. Trust me, I am sure your son's public school math teacher would have LOVED to teach him Algebra and higher level maths. Unfortunately, the teachers must follow a standard curriculum (CCSS) upon which their performance is judged. Your son would have no doubt ended up doing the same important job just by virtue of your support. He happened to be lucky that you were able to provide him a private school education- but don't blame the public schools. Work to improve them so that kids whose parents cannot afford private school can still- for example, perhaps using some of your money to fund afterschool enrichment programs?
Observer08: I'm not sure what your view will achieve longterm. Do you propose that no student of special needs should receive funding to assist their learning? The money spend in SPED is done to in an effort to bring up those with low cognitive functioning to perform at a level that gives them a fighting chance in succeeding in our society. Should we establish concentration camps to remove these students from our schools so the talents of the exceptional student can be further maximized? Public school children are not approached from a cost-benefit analysis, sorry to disappoint you.
How about we restructure our school funding models to include ALL learners so that everyone gets exactly what they need and not at the expense of the other.
PS: I teach G/T kids and I find your elitist suggestion offensive to education as a whole. Educators are not in the "business" of picking and choosing those worthy enough to teach.
If you reread the article that is not what they wrote at all.
When I was director of a public school system's program for elementary gifted kids, back in the days when there was such a thing in many school systems, it seemed to me that there was a kind of tension in the U. S. between "We're Number 1!" and the concept of egalitarianism. Which do you want your brain surgeon to be--an average doctor, or the very top? If you are, say, a gifted basketball player, it's nice to be asked to help the less-able players, but if you never get a chance to play with your own level, after a while you get pretty frustrated. You might even quit, out of boredom. There is nothing wrong with being smart or highly capable in some way. it is good to celebrate and nurture all of our gifts; intellectual capacity is one of them.
From the vantage point of a layperson and parent of grown children, I think giftedness is a more complicated phenomenon than this article would indicate. For instance, some gifted kids will take longer to do a math problem than others, because they think more deeply about it. Some gifted students start reading later, not earlier. And free play can be more important for preschool gifted children then premature academics. Any extra work should go deeper, and not just be more of the same: teachers in regular classrooms could be trained to offer this to anyone in the class, without segregating "the gifted."
There are questions of developing identity that need to be discussed if gifted children are going to be labeled so early. It can be destructive to the complexity of each person's sense of self, to be marked with a label, whether the rest of us think it is a positive one or not. And living in the world with others of varying talents and backgrounds is also important: learning patience, tolerance, helping others. Finally, giftedness is a special need like any other and needs a broader, more complex approach than just academic acceleration. Gifted children don't develop any faster socially or emotionally, and need support for those needs as well. Sometimes giftedness is balanced by other special needs that require attention, and often gifted children are bullied.
There are many resources out there now for gifted children, including programs online such as Kahn academy, which is being used in many classrooms, and virtual high school classes. Dual enrollment in community college or attending other college or university classes is also possible, in person, online, or in low residency programs. The Internet and libraries are available to all. Along with teacher education, guidance counselors could be trained to advise students and parents about options.
I wonder how many gifted people credit school with their achievements. It seems that a lot of the creativity and stimulation happen outside of the system, even in idiosyncratic ways that schools would never provide, and certainly not in AP classes. Someteims the best school program for the gifted is on that leaves then alone. Overall, addressing inequalities in the home would seem to be the best approach, even if that is a very long term, nebulous and difficult goal.
I think there are two problems with these ideas. One is that if we leave it to the parents to provide outside enrichment, we are failing children whose parents cannot afford or do not know how to provide this enrichment. The other is that, even if you are getting enrichment, being bored at school can cause you to a.) not try in order to fit in with classmates, focusing on social interaction rather than learning, b.) not be interested in school subjects anymore because nothing new is being learned, c.) develop bad habits including being unable to tolerate failure (since one easily passes with little effort, moving into a situation in which effort is required can call upon skills the child has never developed), etc.
I have a young relative who scored at the top of his school system in every category. He was given a wonderful letter saying he's qualified to attend any gifted children's program in the state where he lives. Unfortunately, there aren't any within 100 miles of his home. His parents have only a high school education and have shown no interest in helping him with any extracurriculars to encourage him and stimulate his development. At this point, I don't have much hope for him to realize his potential.
I realized my son was extremely gifted when he was in kindergarten. He was off the charts. I tried to get the public schools to provide enrichment but I was told over and over again that ALL the money went to special needs. My son also had special needs that the public school system did not seem at all interested in even considering (and this is Lexington).
I spent thousands of dollars a year on tutoring because he was completely bored in school. In 4th grade he started 7th grade math at the middle school. I had to pay thousands of dollars a year for transportation between the schools, and sometimes he was left stranded at the middle school because the principal failed to inform us of special events and schedule changes. No one in the school system seemed at all interested in providing my son with the education he needed. Once he got into the high school the math, computer, and physics teams were excellent and competed nationally. He found his level. Elementary and middle school were terrible and totally incapable of meeting his needs. My son is now finishing a PhD at MIT in neuroscience. He has already distinguished himself by creating a device (during his masters) that is being used in many research projects. I advocated for my son and spent the money to supplement his education because the school system was incapable of doing so.
Thank you for this article. We need to invest in our best and brightest. They are our future. I remember one school meeting where a parent got up to advocate for more funds for underperforming kids. The parent said the smarter kids can be left in a closet alone and they would succeed. This is not true.
Being gifted absolutely falls on the special needs spectrum, though we’ve come to use “special needs” as a euphemism for “not very bright.” I tested in the top 10%, didn't receive the challenges that I should have, and dropped out; the system refused to reward me with meaningful work unless I jumped through its hoops and it was not sorry to see me walk out at 16 years of age. An under-reported danger facing gifted students is manipulation: some schools manipulate students by only allowing them into honors or advanced placement classes if they agree to take additional tests as well, bumping up overall scores. Those scores not only increase funding and grants, but also result in bonuses for administrators and teachers; savvy schools systems can use their gifted students as rain-makers. Truly, our school systems mirror our society: corrupt, short-sighted, exploitative, and hubristic.
Be gifted in one of the major sports and see how neglected you are.
one issue that is overlooked in this article is the role of mentors in shepherding the gifted child thru an unsupportive environment. I was the first child in my working class family to breeze thru high school then on to University for 3 degrees and a professional career. But my parents had left school between 13 and 15 to go to work, had no experience with formal advanced education, and did not know what to do with a gifted child like me. So I was on my own in many ways, and a lot of my talent was "unfertilized" so to speak. If I had been taken under someone's wing I probably would have been helped to develop my creative talents less wastefully.
So an inexpensive way of responding to the gifted child without the need of federal grants would be to create local resources of mentoring for the gifted child born into poor/undereducated/disadvantaged families---something like a Big Brother/Big Sister program for the gifted. I know personally that when you have no role models it is very hard to know how best to channel your talent both for your own benefit and that of society. As I look back on my life I am glad to have been born talented so that learning came easily and naturally for me, but I also see a lot of wasted opportunities.
We pulled our son from our town's school (on par with Lexington, Concord, etc.) and put him in a charter school dedicated to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). My experience with the teachers and principals was great. They tried to provide additional learning opportunities but the school administration didn't want to provide easy accommodations (bump him up a grade for math, etc.). I've noticed that his peers from that school have left to go to the same charter school or private school. It's really too bad.
If you have a child that is having a negative experience at school because of their giftedness, try talking to your town Special Education Advisory Council officers without prejudice, you might be surprised by how well they can emphasize with your families struggles and may have some very useful ideas for you.
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