The horrific murder of George Floyd and its aftermath led school districts nationwide to strengthen their racial-equity initiatives, which—in many places—included turning a skeptical eye on “gifted” education, honors courses, and selective high schools. Because those programs tend to serve a disproportionately low number of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students when compared with district-wide demographics, some advocates—and some elected officials—called for their elimination or complete overhaul.
That in turn led to a strong backlash in many quarters, including deep-blue communities such as New York, San Francisco, and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. In the City by the Bay, controversy over a policy to remove Algebra I from the district’s middle schools recently escalated into a lawsuit. In the Big Apple, Eric Adams won election as mayor on a plank that included a promise to rebuild the city’s advanced education programs. And just outside our nation’s capital, the decision to replace admissions tests with a merit lottery at the very selective Thomas Jefferson High School led a federal judge to rule that the new policies violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. A U.S. Circuit Court panel has recently reversed this on appeal, however, and the Supreme Court may opt to have the final say.
Meanwhile, at the national level, the decisions in the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases are expected from the Supreme Court any day now. The legal question is whether universities’ use of race-conscious admissions policies to diversify their student bodies violates the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The substantive question is how our diverse nation can ensure that its most prestigious postsecondary institutions are also diverse.
The National Working Group on Advanced Education was formed in Spring 2022 in response to all of this. Its twenty members, of which I am one, include researchers, practitioners, and advocates and represent diversity in terms of ideology, race, gender, and geography. Its purpose was to identify a set of recommendations for school districts, charter networks, and state leaders to use in better developing the talents of these high-ability students, with special attention devoted to students from racially underrepresented groups and low-income backgrounds.
A new report released this week—Building a Wider, More Diverse Pipeline of Advanced Learners—is a product of this work, and offers three-dozen recommendations to education leaders and policymakers at all levels.
We were not always of one mind on how best to further equity while sustaining and enhancing excellence. But where we all agree, and where we suspect most Americans also agree, is that the United States would be in a much better place if it had a robust and diverse pipeline of students prepared to do high-level academic work in high school and college. We believe that we must make sure that every child with the potential for high academic achievement is able to fulfill that potential, regardless of race or socioeconomic status.
Alas, that is not what we have today. The U.S. has been wasting a huge amount of human capital and squandering enormous amounts of human potential at the very moment we need more of it—and much of that wastage is among groups that have for far too long seen their opportunities limited and their potential squandered. We’re talking about bright students, advanced learners, striving pupils, and those with high but untapped potential—especially those who are Black, Hispanic, Native American, low income, or from otherwise marginalized backgrounds—whose educational needs aren’t being satisfactorily met by our schools. This needlessly limits what underrepresented students can learn and become, and causes the pipeline of high-achieving students to be narrower and less diverse than we need it to be if America is to be competitive, prosperous, secure, equitable, and democratic in these challenging times.
We know full well that closing America’s excellence gaps—the gaps between various racial and socioeconomic groups at the highest level of achievement—will not be easy. Like the more-often-discussed achievement gaps, excellence gaps are apparent the minute students enter kindergarten, arising from sharp disparities in children’s experiences from birth to age five. Yet they continues to widen as students progress through school.
Addressing these challenges is going to take work at every level, but most of the action is local. And leaders have a good chance of effecting real change if they keep three overriding principles in mind:
- Build a continuum of advanced learning services, customized to individual students, rather than a binary “you’re in or you’re out” mindset. Just as students with disabilities need customized plans that are reevaluated periodically, so do students who can benefit from advanced learning opportunities. Skipping two grade levels might be right for one student; achievement grouping might be a better choice for another. As a student’s talents are developed, their need for more advanced programming may grow. The goal is to find the right fit for the needs of each child, continually evaluate what’s working and what’s not, and modify services according to students’ demonstrated need on an ongoing basis.
- Embrace inclusion, remove barriers, and reject the scarcity mindset. If our goal is to build a wider, more diverse pipeline of high achievers, we need to be more welcoming to students on the bubble. While advanced learning opportunities imply some level of selectivity, look for reasons to include students in such learning opportunities, rather than excuses to keep them out. And do so at every grade level; never stop looking for students who could benefit from advanced learning. That, in turn, will require creating more seats—in “gifted and talented” programs, honors and advanced courses, selective high schools, and beyond. Instead of arguing over how to ration a scarce resource among the many who seek and could benefit from it, our goal is to make it more widely and equitably available.
- Cultivate school-wide support for advanced learning opportunities for all students. Advanced education should not be thought of as a siloed, one-off activity administered to a select few; it should be woven throughout a school’s culture, professional development, curricular choices, and data analysis.
We know from experience and from research that schools could do many things to narrow excellence gaps, things that they’re not doing or not doing nearly enough of. We are leaving many effective tools in the toolbox. Here’s the good news: The Working Group’s experts believe that if districts and charter networks embrace the recommendations in our report and then implement them intentionally, rigorously, and consistently, we can expect to see a noticeable increase in the size and diversity of the pipeline of students ready for and succeeding with advanced content. This in turn should lead to the kind of advanced learning that results in greater economic security and personal fulfillment for the student, as well as economic prosperity and growth for the nation.
Ignoring the excellence gaps in our schools is not a path to activating all the talent our nation needs, but neither is eliminating advanced learning opportunities on grounds of equity. We must support students whose talents are easily recognizable and create environments where we can seek out those students whose talents are not yet tapped. Equity, done right, includes opening up advanced education to all students who could benefit from it. And excellence, done right, includes doing the hard work to help all students achieve at high levels—not just the students who come to school with great advantages.
You, dear reader, are part of an important movement, perhaps one of the greatest efforts in America today: the work to make sure we have as large and diverse a group of academic high achievers as possible in order to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Let’s not stop until it’s done.
This essay is adapted from Building a Wider, More Diverse Pipeline of Advanced Learners: The Final Report of the National Working Group on Advanced Education.
