But Douglas Kaufman, a literacy professor at UConn’s Neag School of Education, said the test is not culturally responsive and inclusive. In other words, it doesn’t consider the variety of ways that teachers connect to students or other hard-to-quantify measures.

Of the programs that do exist in California and elsewhere, there is no statewide quality control. A recent survey from the University of Connecticut found that most gifted classes in 2,000 schools in three Midwestern and Southern states didn’t actually provide much accelerated content.

“Why do dignity and justice go hand in hand? Because teaching for justice requires that we love the children we teach. And to love young people, we have to fundamentally believe that they matter. Mattering isn’t a feeling; it’s an action. It’s respecting the richness of young people’s identities and acting in the best interest of their humanity.”

“You don’t want to be hostage to even the well-meaning generosity of a philanthropists,” said Casey Cobb, an education policy professor at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “You don’t want to be held hostage to their vision or their way of getting there.”

Suzanne Wilson from the University of Connecticut and Mike Shaughnessy from Portland State University discuss their work on the forthcoming NAEP Mathematics Assessment Framework, courtesy of WestEd.

The Neag School of Education, UConn’s Department of English, and the Connecticut Writing Project (CWP) at UConn are proud to announce Connecticut’s winners of the 26th annual Letters About Literature competition, a nationwide contest sponsored by the Library of Congress for students in grades 4 through 12.

“Teachers and educators are not super supportive of acceleration,” said Betsy McCoach, one of the researchers and a professor at the University of Connecticut. “But it doesn’t make sense to pull kids together to do the same thing that everyone else is doing.”

Morgaen Donaldson, director of Education Policy Analysis at the University of Connecticut, said Connecticut should consider the wealth of existing research on what works for disengaged teenagers when developing how it will spend the money.

“Unfortunately, many of our nation’s brightest students from underserved populations (e.g., Black, Hispanic, English Learner, and/or free and reduced-price lunch eligible) are not being identified as gifted and do not receive gifted education services,” says Del Siegle, principal investigator with the National Center for Research on Gifted Education and an associate dean with the Neag School. “About 80% of states that completed the most recent National Association for Gifted Children’s State of the States survey indicated that underrepresentation of students from underserved populations was an important or very important issue in their state.”

The justification for gifted education is simple: Academically advanced children should be given work at their speed and level, both to nurture their talents and prevent them from becoming bored and disruptive in class.