Last week, I was called out of my sixth-period class to speak on a panel of students about our experiences with being identified as gifted and talented (GT). Students from the freshmen, sophomore, and junior classes each communicated our struggles, hopes, and fears to a selection of individuals from the district and state.
As the meeting unfolded, I watched my peers describe common points of interest, like the lack of support with social-emotional wellbeing for students who have traditionally been classified as ‘high-achieving’ or ‘advanced’. I realized that I’d been accepting a truth that doesn’t necessarily have to be the way that it is; gifted students at LHS are not given appropriate support.
Gifted students have, over the past year, become well acquainted with Google Classroom announcements instructing us to turn in reflections for our Advanced Learning Plans (ALPs). But the assignments often feel tedious, just one more thing for us to do. And they’re so generic (think: I will pass my English class) that they do little to address the individual needs of each student. What we’re left with is an underdeveloped component of student support that has little benefit to the students that it most involves.
Gifted students make up a considerable portion of the student population, so reforms to the management of gifted students would potentially improve the academic careers of many students. How much are these students losing to a program that just isn’t enough?
Aside from the ALPs distributed to students at the beginning of the year and the reflections that many students don’t even fill out, the only proposed accommodations for GT students are to enroll in higher-level courses like honors or IB classes. But this strategy is flawed because it often isn’t enough.
As much as I (and many of my peers) have enjoyed many of my IB, AP, and honors classes that I’ve taken in high school, they often don’t feel challenging or personalized enough for me to truly benefit from them. An April 2021 study published by the American Educational Research Association found that gifted programs only minimally improve test scores of high achieving students when compared to high-achieving students not actively participating in a gifted program. Importantly, the study found that not only are Black and Hispanic students largely underrepresented in gifted programs, but they don’t experience the same (minimal) academic gains as their white, Asian, and/or wealthier counterparts.
So what does this mean for LHS students? Well, for one thing, we need to see more diversity among students who are considered for gifted and talented classification. A high school whose student population is nearly fifty percent composed of minority students should have advanced classes reflecting that same sentiment. And yet, the vast majority of students in my IB and honors classes are white. Students who belong to marginalized communities should not only be given the opportunity to take advanced classes but should be encouraged to do so.
Additionally, the lack of academic support for gifted students that results in minor academic growth throughout the course of the year leaves gifted students unable to feel adequately challenged in the classroom. When honors classes aren’t enough for gifted students (which they often aren’t), there isn’t anywhere to go. So we stay in our classes, bored, understimulated, and tired of working with material that we’re already familiar with. Even when students become eligible for IB classes, especially when they substitute for honors courses, the same phenomenon can be observed. In short: we need more. More opportunities to further our learning, more personalization to the needs of students (as opposed to a prescribed curriculum), more support for the social-emotional difficulties that can arise in GT students especially, and more openness about what it means to be GT.
Gifted students have been shown time and time again to have different needs than other students, and to be more at-risk for certain symptoms of poor mental health like insecurity and perfectionism. It’s also been widely posited that gifted students are at risk of being misdiagnosed with conditions ranging from ADHD to Asperger’s to OCD because their giftedness predisposes them to behaviors interpreted to be pathological.
These risks are never outright explained to gifted students; I myself have struggled with the effects of severe mental illness for several years but was never informed that my giftedness may have played a role in the development of these issues in my early childhood and presently. Furthermore, I never felt clear about who I was academically speaking, nor what made me different from the other students. Even now, I find that my needs are unique and often differ from others in my friend group or classes. But the limits of the current GT program mean that information regarding the treatment of gifted students is neither widely distributed nor taken into account when considering the wellbeing of an entire demographic.
But options for GT students who are struggling in any way do exist. Whether it’s a 504 plan or a new class altogether, there are changes that can be made to accommodate the needs of high-achieving students. We just need someone who will listen to us and help us implement meaningful change into a system that wasn’t designed with our circumstances in mind. Why should we have to settle for an education that just doesn’t account for us?
More than anything, gifted students need to feel heard. Sometimes, it’s like nothing we say matters at all, and that’s not how school should work. There is a world in which the GT program can truly make a difference in the lives of those who are a part of it, we just need to put in the effort to achieve it.