Schools should support gifted students, not work against them

Editor's note: This blog was first published as a letter to the editor in the Washington Post on August 7, 2016.

A profound injustice occurs when our schools fail to meet the needs of our most advanced students—and, in some cases, actively work against these learners and their parents—as Jay Mathews noted in his August 1 column, “She is a gifted young student, so why did educators doubt her ability?”

Caitlyn Singam and her family had to overcome the obstinacy of teachers and administrators in Montgomery County who doubted Caitlyn’s brilliance and erected roadblocks to her being appropriately served. Unfortunately, gifted learners often suffer similar slights and all-out neglect, even in well-regarded districts like Montgomery County.

Under last year’s rewrite of No Child Left Behind, federal law explicitly authorizes school districts to use Title I funds to identify and serve gifted students and Title II funds to train teachers in working with such students. The law also enhances reporting on the progress of gifted students, and it supports research on identifying and serving gifted children from underrepresented populations in gifted education programs.

None of these provisions offers a panacea for decades of neglect and mistreatment, but they move us in the right direction. Nurturing the talents of high-potential students such as Caitlyn will be critical to the future vitality of our region, nation, and world. It’s time that our schools support these students rather than work against them.

Keri Guilbault is a board member of the National Association for Gifted Children.

Editor's note: This is part of a series of blog posts that is collaboratively published every week by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and National Association for Gifted Children. Each post in the series exists both here on the NAGC Blog and Fordham's Flypaper.