A Nation Deceived

Last updated

A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students is The Templeton National Report on Acceleration, a report which was published in 2004 and edited by Nicholas Colangelo, Susan G. Assouline, and Miraca Gross. This report argues for the academic acceleration of qualified gifted and talented students, [1] based on the results of studies on outcomes of accelerating and not accelerating high-achieving students. [2] Despite the evidence that acceleration is a beneficial practice when implemented correctly, many teachers and parents are reluctant to accelerate students. The report presents the research on acceleration in an effort to increase the number of students who have access to acceleration.

Contents

The report is divided into two parts: Volume I, which summarizes the research and provides an introduction to acceleration as an academic intervention for gifted students; and Volume II, an edited volume that provides a more detailed overview of relevant research studies.

The success of A Nation Deceived led to the creation of the Acceleration Institute (formerly the Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration), which is dedicated to the study and support of educational acceleration for academically talented students.

A Nation Empowered , a follow-up to A Nation Deceived, was published in 2015. It expands upon findings of the original report and incorporates research that has emerged since publication of A Nation Deceived.

Contents

The first three of its "20 Most Important Points from Volume II" are: [3]

  1. Acceleration is the most effective curriculum intervention for gifted children.
  2. For bright students, acceleration has long-term beneficial effects, both academically and socially.
  3. Acceleration, especially in the form of grade skipping, is a virtually cost-free intervention.

Among other points, the report also indicates that:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Center for Talented Youth</span> Gifted education program

The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) is a gifted education program for school-age children founded in 1979 by psychologist Julian Stanley at Johns Hopkins University. It was established as a research study into how academically advanced children learn and became the first program to identify academically talented students through above-grade-level testing and provide them with challenging learning opportunities. CTY offers summer, online, and family programs to students from around the world and has nearly 30,000 program enrollments annually. CTY is accredited for students in grades K to 12 by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.

Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, with various consequences studied in longitudinal studies of giftedness over the last century. There is no generally agreed definition of giftedness for either children or adults, but most school placement decisions and most longitudinal studies over the course of individual lives have followed people with IQs in the top 2.5 percent of the population—that is, IQs above 130. Definitions of giftedness also vary across cultures.

Gifted education is a broad group of special practices, procedures, and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented.

The Duke University Talent Identification Program was a gifted education program based at Duke University. Founded in 1980 as one of the first pre-collegiate studies programs offered by an American university, the program aimed to identify gifted students in grades four through twelve and provide advanced educational opportunities, as well as social and emotional support. The Duke TIP program permanently ended in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When children are young, schools begin to analyze the youngsters’ abilities and sort them into clusters based on their predicted success. The system labels the highest intellectual students as gifted. Clark (2002) defines giftedness as “only a label that society gives to those who have actualized their ability to an unusually high degree or give evidence that such achievement is imminent”. The American government defines giftedness as “students, children or youth who give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities”. Gifted students learn in a different manner and at an accelerated rate compared to their peers in the classroom and therefore require gifted programs to develop and apply their talents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Education Program for Gifted Youth</span> School

The Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) at Stanford University was a loose collection of gifted education programs formerly located within Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program. EPGY included distance and residential summer courses for students of all ages. Many of the courses were distance learning, meaning that courses were taught remotely via the Internet, rather than in the traditional classroom setting. Courses targeted students from elementary school up to advanced college graduate. Subjects offered included: Mathematics, English, Humanities, Physics, and Computer Science. Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies is similar to the Center for Talented Youth at the Johns Hopkins University in terms of certain objectives. The EPGY courses themselves were offered by a number of institutions including Stanford and Johns Hopkins.

Julian Cecil Stanley was an American psychologist. He was an advocate of accelerated education for academically gifted children. He founded the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY), as well as a related research project, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), whose work has, since 1980, been supplemented by the Julian C. Stanley Study of Exceptional Talent (SET), which provides academic assistance to gifted children. Stanley was also widely known for his classic book, coauthored with Donald Campbell, on the design of educational and psychological research - Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research.

Center for Talent Development (CTD), established in 1982, is a direct service and research center in the field of gifted education and talent development based at Northwestern University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winston Churchill High School (Livonia, Michigan)</span> Public school in Livonia, Michigan, United States

Churchill High School, named after Winston Churchill, is one of the four main public high schools in the city of Livonia, Michigan, a western suburb of Detroit. The school was created in 1968 as an add-on to the other high schools in Livonia in response to the population boom that the city saw at the time. The first school year (1968–69), a sophomore class attended classes at nearby Franklin High School. Beginning in the 1969–70 school year, classes were then held in the new building with a junior and sophomore class. The first graduating class graduated in June 1971. The school is home to the MSC program as well as the Creative and Performing Arts program (CAPA). It also has a wide variety of athletics. The Girls' Cross-Country team finished second in the state of Michigan in 2006, and the Girls' Varsity Volleyball team won the 2007 state championship. The Livonia Career Technical Center is across the street, providing all Livonia Public School students the opportunity to engage in many hands-on activities.

Gifted Education in public schools is mandated by Georgia law and is governed by the Georgia Board of Education (GBOE) Rule 160-4-2-.38 and GBOE-approved regulations. The GBOE Gifted Education Rule was initiated November 13, 1997, reinitiated January 8, 1998 and then adopted on February 12, 1998 in the final form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracking (education)</span> Separation of students by ability

Tracking is separating students by academic ability into groups for all subjects or certain classes and curriculum within a school. It may be referred to as streaming or phasing in some schools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academic acceleration</span> Moving students through education faster than typical

Academic acceleration is moving students through an educational program at a rate faster or at an age younger than is typical. Students who would benefit from acceleration do not necessarily need to be identified as gifted in a particular subject. Acceleration places them ahead of where they would be in the regular school curriculum. It has been described as a "fundamental need" for gifted students as it provides students with level-appropriate material. The practice occurs worldwide. The bulk of educational research on academic acceleration has been within the United States.

Grade skipping is a form of academic acceleration, often used for academically talented students, that enable the student to skip entirely the curriculum of one or more years of school. Grade skipping allows students to learn at an appropriate level for their cognitive abilities, and is normally seen in schools that group students primarily according to their chronological age, rather than by their individual developmental levels. Grade skipping is usually done when a student is sufficiently advanced in all school subjects, so that they can move forward in all subjects or graduate, rather than in only one or two areas. There are alternatives to grade skipping.

Direct Instruction (DI) is a term for the explicit teaching of a skill-set using lectures or demonstrations of the material to students. A particular subset of direct instruction, denoted by capitalization as Direct Instruction, refers to a specific example of the approach developed by Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley C. Becker. DI teaches by explicit instruction, in contrast to exploratory models such as inquiry-based learning. DI includes tutorials, participatory laboratory classes, discussion, recitation, seminars, workshops, observation, active learning, practica, or internships. Model includes "I do" (instructor), "We do", "You do".

Remedial education is assigned to assist students in order to achieve expected competencies in core academic skills such as literacy and numeracy.

Cluster grouping is an educational process in which four to six gifted and talented (GT) or high-achieving students or both are assigned to an otherwise heterogeneous classroom within their grade to be instructed by a teacher who has had specialized training in differentiating for gifted learners. Clustering can be contrasted with other ability-grouping strategies in which high achievers fill their own dedicated class, entirely separate from other students.

Gifted pull-outs are an educational approach in which gifted students are removed from a heterogeneous (mixed-ability) classroom to spend a portion of their time with academic peers. Pull-outs tend to meet one to two hours per week. The students meet with a teacher to engage in enrichment or extension activities that may or may not be related to the curriculum being taught in the regular classroom. Pull-out teachers in some states are not required to have any formal background in gifted education.

The Gifted Education Research Resource Institute (GERI) is a multidimensional center dedicated to the study, discovery, and development of human potential. It was founded by John F. Feldhusen in 1977 and is situated in the College of Education, Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. GERI's mission is holistic development of giftedness, creativity, and talent among individuals throughout their lifespan. This is accomplished through enrichment programs for talented youth, graduate programs for future scholars and leaders, professional development and coursework for educators, and ongoing research on the psychology of giftedness, creativity, and talent development. GERI faculty and staff work with P-12 educators in developing and improving services for gifted, creative, and talented children, as well as training school teachers and administrators in gifted education. In addition, GERI has developed several programs for talented youth. The Super Saturday program, a six-week enrichment program, was created in the spring of 1976. In 1977, GERI began Summer Residential Camps, aimed at providing a preview of college life to talented students.

A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students is a follow-up to the 2004 report A Nation Deceived. A Nation Empowered is a national, research-based report on utilizing academic acceleration for advanced learners published by the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa. This report supplies the evidence that no other educational intervention works as well as acceleration for gifted students. It provides parents, educators, administrators, and policymakers with the research on acceleration and the tools to advocate for their brightest students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PERMATApintar National Gifted Center</span> School in Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

The PERMATApintar National Gifted Center, UKM, more commonly known as the Malaysian National Gifted Centre, UKM is a gifted center that provides education services for gifted and talented Malaysian students aged 12 – 17 in Malaysia. It was established by University Kebangsaan Malaysia to support the Malaysian Gifted and Talented Program mooted by Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor in 2009. ; wife of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato' Seri Najib Razak. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia under the leadership of then Vice Canselor, Tan Sri Dato Wira Dr. Sharifah Hapsah binti Syed Hasan Shahabudin was appointed as the implementer of the program. Professor Datuk Dr. Noriah Mohd Ishak was then appointed as the first Director of the Malaysian National Gifted Center Pusat PERMATApintar Negara, UKM. Her role was to develop assessment tools to search for the gifted and talented, develop the academic pathways for gifted and talented Malaysian children, develop a comprehensive and challenging curriculum for the gifted and talented Malaysian students and implement the program effectively with the support of UKM, for the benefit of gifted and talented Malaysian students. It is the only programme in Malaysia that identifies academically gifted and talented students. PERMATApintar currently offers three programmes: the Summer Camp programme (PPCS), the PERMATApintar College programme, and the ASASIpintar programme.

References

  1. "Fast Learners Benefit From Skipping Grades, Report Concludes". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 26, 2008.
  2. "Saving the Smart Kids". Time . September 27, 2004. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
  3. A Nation Deceived Volume I, p. 2