Excellence gaps: New resources and a personal history
In the last quarter-century, we've made amazing progress in our understanding of excellence gaps and how to address them. Two recent reports illustrate how far we've come and the work yet to be done.
The Fordham Institute’s new report, Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status, authored by Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner, is a significant addition to our growing knowledge about excellence gaps. Taken in concert with the recent report from the National Working Group on Advanced Education (of which I was a member), this work encouraged me to reflect back on over fifteen years of work on how excellence gaps form and how we can shrink and eliminate them.
The idea for the concept of “excellence gaps” first emerged while I was a fly on the wall at state-level education meetings and hearings in Indiana around 2006. Everyone was grumpy about NCLB and its implementation, but the conversations tended to focus on closing achievement gaps.
This got me wondering about two issues: Everyone was talking about “achievement gaps” as if there were just one gap; weren’t they really talking about “minimum competency gaps”? And would advocacy for advanced students be more effective if reoriented around the theme of achievement gaps? I began asking these questions of colleagues in Indiana and elsewhere, and eventually the concept of “excellence gaps”—those gaps at the top end of the achievement distribution—began to form.
Our first report on excellence gaps was released in 2010 to utter and complete silence. We couldn’t get traction with any academics, K–12 educators, or policymakers. Every major network promised to send a crew to our press conference at the National Press Club, but the only journalist who showed was from a D.C. weekly who never did a story on the report (some scars never heal!).
But things began to change. A colleague and I were walking through the hallways of the U.S. Department of Education when we noticed a program officer walk by with a copy of the report. A few weeks later, we learned that a state school chief was asking about the report. And we knew something was happening when a governor’s chief of staff called to express the governor’s displeasure “about how bad our state’s data look in your report.”
As the slow burn from the first report turned into real momentum, we produced a second report, a handful of additional papers, and even some initial thoughts on interventions. With the generous support of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, we produced two detailed, state-level reports on academic excellence and excellence gaps.
The intervention work led to the Excellence Gap Intervention Model, which we recently validated and improved. The model has led to projects with districts across the country as they tackle excellence gaps. My team is especially excited about our afterschool interventions, which are part of the After School Excellence Network, but all the intervention projects are making progress.
I share this timeline to make a broader point: Even a decade ago, it was not surprising to have education leaders throw up their hands when faced with excellence gaps and say, “No one knows what to do! Let’s just get rid of advanced programs and at least we won’t have huge participation gaps on our hands.” This isn’t a terribly helpful attitude (it ignores both the symptoms and disease, so to speak), but I understood where it was coming from. Despite decades of related research, we just didn’t know enough.
Fast forward to today, and we do know enough. Indeed, we know far, far more than most K–12 leaders recognize. Advances in talent identification, curriculum design, differentiation, acceleration, and several other areas have been profound, and much of this research has resulted in strategies and interventions that educators can use immediately. The National Working Group on Advanced Education report does a great job of summarizing this progress, and I was honored to play a small part in the group’s work. There is simply no excuse for the old administrator attitude of “program elimination is my only option.” We know how to do this!
At the same time, foundational research on the nature of excellence gaps is still needed. In this regard, the report by Dr. Coffey and Dr. Tyner provides key insights. For example, excellence gaps by race or socioeconomic status have been frequently documented, yet this report also examined gaps by race and socioeconomic status. I have been playing with similar data for years and roughly knew what to expect, but seeing it depicted was still a bucket of ice water to the face (see, in particular, Figure 4 in the report, reproduced below). Among my takeaways is that racial excellence gaps get larger as one moves from lower to higher socioeconomic levels. Part of that is obvious: If there is little advanced achievement among students experiencing the lowest levels of economic security, then gaps will be relatively small. But that effect is confounded by the fact that, for Black and Hispanic students, the increase in advanced performance from low to high levels of socioeconomic status is very small; even at the highest levels, only 1 percent of Black students and 3 percent of Hispanic students score advanced. This causes me to wonder why the obvious benefits of higher economic security are correlated with higher advanced performance in some racial and ethnic groups but negligible in others. That finding alone is worth a national conversation.
Figure: Excellence gaps by race/ethnicity persist within student socioeconomic groups
Note from the report: “These are the [report] authors’ calculations from data representing eighth-grade achievement on the NAEP, averaged from 2015 to 2022. The measure of SES is the mother’s highest level of education. AAPI refers to Asian American and Pacific Islander students.”
Make no mistake, this will be a difficult conversation, not least because discussions involving race so easily descend into name-calling and accusations of bad faith. But as fraught as these conversations may be, we must have them.
Not to make anyone feel old, but we’re nearly a quarter of the way through this century. Since 2000, we have made amazing progress in our understanding of the nature of excellence gaps and how to address them. We can and should acknowledge this progress while noting the work yet to be done as we seek to develop the talents of all of our children. These two recent reports are important milestones and next steps on that journey, and I’m grateful to the Fordham team for their continued commitment to this work.
Jonathan Plucker is a Professor of Education and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Education.
Note: The following elements of the newsletter were compiled by Brandon Wright, Advance’s editor.
QUOTE OF NOTE
“There is a battle in American education over two loaded adjectives, ‘gifted’ and ‘advanced.’ It has raged behind the scenes for decades, but that may change. The issue made an important appearance recently in a scholarly paper by a national panel of experts on education and other topics—some liberal, some conservative—that strongly argued we should get rid of ‘gifted’ and replace it with ‘advanced.’ Their reasoning provides an opportunity to assess where we are with school learning in America after decades of confusion about what works and what doesn’t.”
—Jay Mathews, Washington Post, September 3, 2023
RESEARCH REVIEW
“Conceptual Replication of Parental Influences on the Academic Motivation of Gifted Students: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective,” by Michael S. Matthews, Olivia Wylie, and Amanda Styles, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, published online September 14, 2023
“Despite the strong influence parenting plays in every aspect of child development, there has been relatively little research focused on how parents influence the academic motivation of their high-ability or gifted child in the home setting. The current study details a conceptual replication of one widely cited study on this topic conducted by Garn et al. (2010). We used an exploratory qualitative design to analyze interview responses gathered from 14 parents (mothers of 22 gifted students) using a content analysis approach within the theoretical framework offered by the Self-Determination Theory taxonomy of motivation developed by Deci and Ryan. Our independent analysis grouped the content of parent responses into four themes that are consistent with those reported in the original study by Garn et al.”
“A Critique on the Current State of Research on the Social and Emotional Experiences of Gifted Individuals and a Framework for Moving the Field Forward,” by Anne N. Rinn, Gifted Child Quarterly, published online September 11, 2023
“Despite multiple edited volumes dedicated to the various theories and conceptions of giftedness and talent that have been published over the past 40 years, the field of gifted education is still definitionally and paradigmatically fractured. These differences have led to a misunderstanding about the social and emotional experiences of gifted individuals that has further divided the field of gifted education. One purpose of this paper is to explain how varying definitions and paradigms of giftedness lead us to different answers and assumptions about the social and emotional experiences of gifted individuals, and the implications of those. The other purpose of this paper is to outline a framework for moving forward in thinking about and conducting research on the social and emotional experiences of gifted individuals.”
“Effects of mathematical modelling based project production and management program on gifted students’ mathematical modelling and reflective thinking for real-life problem solving,” by Gülnur Özbek and Seokhee Cho, Gifted Education International, Volume 39, Issue 3, September 2023
“This study aimed to examine the relationship between mathematical modelling and reflective thinking and to examine the effects of employing mathematical modelling processes on perception of mathematical modelling competencies and reflective thinking skills for real-life problem solving of gifted students participating in Project Production and Management Program at Turkish Science and Art Centers. Correlational path analysis of 300 students data revealed that Mathematical modelling is a significant predictor of reflective thinking skills, and the constructed model was found to be of a good fit with excellent path coefficients. Experimental design with pre-post-maintenance-tests with comparison group was employed with 60 students purposefully selected chosen from the above regression study. Reflective thinking and mathematical modelling levels of experimental group students who employed mathematical modelling processes for Project Production and Management increased significantly more from pre- to post-tests, and the significant difference was found to be maintained.”
WRITING WORTH READING
“Virginia Department of Education approves AP African American History course after months-long review,” WTOP News, Ivy Lyons, September 17, 2023
“BVSD [Boulder, Colorado] looks to provide more equitable access to advanced math classes,” Boulder Daily Camera, Amy Bounds, September 15, 2023
“Somerset [Kentucky] School Board gets lesson on gifted and talented program,” Commonwealth Journal, Carla Slavey, September 14, 2023
“CPS shortens high school admissions test but pauses plan that would have diversified selective schools,” Chicago Sun-Times, Nader Issa, September 14, 2023
“Let’s shatter stereotypes about what an AP class—and students—look like,” EdSource, Leonard Finch, September 13, 2023
“Fight between ‘gifted’ and ‘advanced’ programs exposes deeper problems,” Washington Post, Jay Mathews, September 3, 2023
“Mapleton Public Schools [Colorado] district opens new school for gifted and advanced students,” Denver 7 ABC, Nicole Brady, August 31, 2023
“Why schools close Black boys out of gifted and talented programs,” American Counseling Association, August 29, 2023
“The big lesson parents of high-achieving kids must teach again and again,” Fatherly, Christian Dashiell, August 28, 2023
“College Board official: We don’t dictate how ap courses are taught,” Education Week, Kaylee Domzalski and Ileana Najarro, August 28, 2023