Should special education include advanced students?

If that's the only way these children will get the education they deserve—and in New York City, for example, that seems to be the case—then the answer may be yes.

In New York City, thousands of students deemed “gifted” by the Department of Education’s own assessment standards are denied access advanced-education programs due to the lack of available seats.

Their parents are desperate for options when it comes to accommodating children capable of doing above grade-level work. In a city of close to 1 million students, where, in some neighborhoods, for example, half are scoring in the top 10th percentile on IQ tests, that equals thousands of underserved kids.

Several states, including Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, offer an individualized education plan for advanced students. A few more, like Arizona, Florida, and Kentucky, have a variation, like an "individual service plan” or a “gifted student service plan.”

I asked subscribers to my NYC School Secrets mailing list whether they would support a situation like the one currently available in Kansas, where advanced programming is bundled under special education and all students who qualify receive an IEP.

Provisions of this law include:

• “Special education” means the following: Specially designed instruction, at no cost to the parents, to meet the unique needs of an exceptional child.

• Each gifted child shall be permitted to test out of, or work at an individual rate, and receive credit for required or prerequisite courses, or both, at all grade levels, if so specified in that child’s individualized education program. Any gifted child may receive credit for college study at the college or high school level, or both. If a gifted child chooses to receive college credit, however, the student shall be responsible for the college tuition costs.

This arrangement would have been particularly useful for my family and might have kept my middle child from dropping out of high school when he wasn’t allowed to take the higher-level classes he wanted. I tried to enroll him in college but hit a bureaucratic wall when they wouldn’t accept him without a high school diploma, even though he scored higher on standardized tests than the average student the college accepted.

The majority of my fellow NYC parents were in favor of a similar statute for New York state.

“Absolutely! This is so necessary,” cheered mother of three Laura B. “Gifted children definitely have special needs and they should be educated at the level they deserve. I fully support a bill like this for NYC.”

“It would be amazing if public school could provide material at [advanced kids’] level,” sighed A.K. a mother of two, “instead of the cookie-cutter curriculum they shove down the throats of all students.”

Elaine Daly, parent, social worker, and school counselor, did express concerns about how these children would be identified. “Would [the IEP assessment] be designed with the understanding that traditional tests are not the only standard of gifted?”

A lack of qualified teachers is what worries mom Iona Baldini. “I’m concerned that schools don’t have teachers who can work with gifted kids. There are very few teachers that can meet gifted kids at their level. I think we need infrastructure and a different mindset to teach gifted students.”

Gayle Doyle, a one-time advanced child herself, isn’t concerned. “Part of being gifted means that you are challenging and learning yourself. In fourth grade, our class implemented a ‘test out’ for math. You took the test before the unit, and if you scored above a certain level, you didn’t have to go through that lesson and were given more advanced work to do independently. I tested out of all the units. I was able to go into the hallway during math lessons where I worked on more challenging math problems. It was completely self-led, the teachers only had to provide problems for me to work on, but there was no instruction. I found it better this way, and this was done a while ago without IEPs.”

Finally, a parent who asked to be identified as KC sees another bright side to offering IEPs for advanced students. “There is a lot of prejudice against kids with an IEP by other parents. The number of times I’ve heard them complain about having their ‘gen ed’ kid being in a class with an IEP kid (like mine) is too disappointing to list. That’s because there’s an assumption that IEP always means my kids have a negative trait that will ‘hold their [kid] back.’ A law like this might help these parents realize that there are equally deserving IEP students who should have their skills nurtured.”

Assessing students and implementing individualized education plans is an expense few school districts, especially NYC, which is losing enrollment—and thus funding—can afford. An obvious, cost-effective solution would be to offer a higher-level curriculum for all. This across-the-board upgrade should be enough for most of those currently considered advanced. But pleas to that effect have fallen on deaf ears for decades. The curriculum is, instead, dumbed down, most recently with the removal of Regents exams as a graduation requirement.

If the only way parents can get an appropriate education for their academically advanced child is by demanding the same “free and appropriate public education” currently only available to those classified as “handicapped” by the U.S. Department of Education, then that’s what they may need to resort to. I realize it would put extra strain on an already overtaxed system, and it would cost more. I would rather not go that route. It’s the worst possible option for everyone, families and schools, in terms of expense and effort. But it feels like NYC parents have been left with no alternatives.

Editor’s note: A different version of this essay was first published by The 74.

---

Note: The following elements of the newsletter were compiled by Brandon Wright, Advance’s editor.

---

QUOTE OF NOTE

“His teacher is great, but she says she has zero support from the [Seattle public school] district in how to help my son access appropriate-level learning—no resources, no training, no funding, and they don't even tell her who has qualified [for advanced learning] or how they qualified.”

—Parent quoted in “Seattle Public Schools delays sunset of highly-capable cohort program,” by Sami West, KUOW [Seattle, WA], March 14, 2025

---

RESEARCH REVIEW

“Assessing the COVID-19 Pandemic’s Influence on Advanced Placement College Readiness Indicators in Texas From 2019 to 2021,” by Travis D. Hill, Yuyang Shen, Vicky Weiqing Ji, and Jaret Hodges, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, OnlineFirst, March 12, 2025

“This scoping review reflects on the extant research on parents of the gifted following the last critique of the literature offered by Jolly and Matthews in 2012. The method for the search followed the PRISMA-Scr protocol utilizing the SPIDER framework. Articles fell into two main themes of parental awareness and parental actions in the inductive content analysis. Using the a priori focus areas from the Jolly and Matthews article on the second-round content analysis, articles aligned with the five focus areas: examining attitudes and expectations of nontraditional families, studying the full range of satisfaction with school programming, investigating alignment of parental understanding of terms with researchers, determining how parental understandings translate into behaviors, and reviewing relationship dynamics that contribute to underachievement. There was insufficient evidence for a COVID-19 impact on publications. Findings reflect the importance of including international literature and lay the groundwork for a robust mixed-methods synthesis.”

“Smart But Maladapted? Differences in the Psychological Functioning of Intellectually Gifted Students Compared With Average-Ability Students,” by Steffani Saß, Olaf Köller, and Friederike Zimmermann, Gifted Child Quarterly, OnlineFirst, February 15, 2025

“The relationship between giftedness and psychological functioning has been studied extensively, but conflicting views persist. Whereas some studies have suggested that gifted children are at risk of developing emotional and behavioral disorders, others have proposed that they have superior socioemotional adjustment compared with average-ability peers. Using a large unselected sample (N = 3,918), we examined n = 100 gifted students matched via propensity score matching with n = 100 average-ability students. Gifted students showed higher academic achievement in math and reading (standardized test scores and grades), higher self-concept in math, and lower teacher-rated externalizing problems. All other comparisons on social and emotional-behavioral functioning as rated by parents, teachers, or classmates did not suggest any differences between the two groups. Giftedness appears to be a protective factor rather than a risk factor for psychological functioning. These results have important implications for the identification, support, and education of gifted children.”

“Career counselling framework for sustainable career trajectories Anthropocene: Intervention with a gifted disadvantaged youth,” by Kobus Maree, Gifted Education International, OnlineFirst, January 31, 2025

“This article reports on an intervention based on a new approach to career counselling in the Anthropocene era. The research aimed to examine the determinants of the changes that occurred in the research participant rather than just the changes themselves. A gifted 17-year-old male (clarifying his career choice) was conveniently and purposively selected from enrichment workshop attendees. A descriptive and instrumental case study research was used to generate data. The workshop attendees completed the Career Interest Profile and the Maree Career Matrix to facilitate the intervention. Savickas’ guidelines for analyzing career construction-related data were used to analyze the data. The intervention enhanced the participant’s psychological self as an autobiographical author especially. After the intervention the participant gave evidence of an enhanced sense of eco-awareness and moral behavior). Further research is needed to establish the short-term and long-term effect of the kind of intervention in individual and group contexts.”

---

WRITING WORTH READING

“The College Board adds two new AP courses. Here’s what makes them different” —Education Week, Alyson Klein, March 19, 2025

“How well is Wake schools serving gifted students? It depends on who you ask.” Raleigh News & Obsersver [North Carolina], T. Keung Hui, March 19, 2025

“Growing GT program helps students reach potential” —The Sentinel-Record [Hot Springs, Arkansas], Brandon Smith, March 19, 2025

“Ides of March Edition” —Everyone Has a Plan, Jonathan Plucker, March 15, 2025

“Seattle Public Schools delays sunset of highly-capable cohort program” —KUOW [Seattle, WA], Sami West, March 14, 2025

“How early relationships fuel brain development and learning” —The 74, Isabelle Hau and Michelle Kang, March 12, 2025

“High school students benefit from increased participation, success in advanced placement courses” —The Mining Journal [Marquette, Michigan], March 12, 2025

“Governor signs proclamation naming February as Gifted Education Month in Kentucky” —Kentucky Teacher, Myles Young, February 13, 2025

“Gem Prep Charter School drawing in students with accelerated learning opportunities” —Local News 8 [Idaho Falls, ID], By Sam Ross, February 13, 2025

“Despite push to scale back leveled courses, most Mass. districts retain advanced high school classes” —Boston Globe, Christopher Huffaker, February 12, 2025

“Who needs Harvard?” —Education Next, Ben Wildavsky, February 5, 2025