Archive | July, 2026

Gifted and Talented Education Issues

22 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/22/2026

In California, we call them GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) students, other states have their own designations. Whatever label gifted and talented students are given, these programs are fraught with controversy. The smell of elitism bothers many people and how students in the programs are identified sparks equity concerns. There is also unease about the mental health of GATE students.

Matthew Yglesias, a cofounder of Vox whose articles have appeared in Atlantic, Slate, Think Progress, American Prospect and other publications, recently wrote about Gifted and Talented education in New York. His article was published by ‘The 74’ this July.

It was mostly a response to Katie Arnold-Ratliff cover story for New York Magazine criticizing New York City’s gifted and talented program in public schools. She broached skepticism of giftedness based on a 2019 study by Brian Bernstein, Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski on the life outcomes of intellectually precocious youth. One of their findings said that 12.3% of youths identified as gifted became eminent later in life. Eminent was defined as being a Fortune 500 CEO, leader in medicine, prestigious judge, scientist or lawyer. Arnold-Ratliff found this low percentage reason to doubt the value of GATE education.

Yglesias disagreed. He attributed this to a “dysfunctional tendency in some edu-left circles to stigmatize all efforts at measurement.” He believes Arnold-Ratliff’s critique of gifted and talented is wrong and is another part of the push to eliminate tracking in K-12 schools; which he believes to be a good idea.

Gifted Education History

October 6, 1971, Commissioner of Education, S. P. Maryland, sent a copy of a congressionally mandated report on the status of gifted and talented education in the country to Vice President Spiro Agnew and House Speaker Carl Albert. The report included:

“Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons who by virtue of outstanding abilities, are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society. Children capable of high performance include those with demonstrated achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas, singly or in combination:

    1. general intellectual ability
    2. specific academic aptitude
    3. creative or productive thinking
    4. leadership ability
    5. visual and performing arts
    6. psychomotor ability” (Page 8)

In it, there is an estimate that 3% to 5% of students fit this definition. The report also claims, “Gifted and talented children are, in-fact, deprived and can suffer psychological damage and permanent impairment of their abilities to function well which is equal to or greater than the similar deprivation suffered by any other population with special needs served by the Office of Education.” (Pages 10-11)

The study was planned, coordinated, and directed by Jane Case Williams, Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Development (Page 19). Jane began her government career at Head Start in the Office of Economic Opportunity. She transferred to the U.S. Office of Education (now the Department of Education) to plan and direct the mandated study of gifted education. The paper is known as the Maryland Report.

Another major effort for gifted education was the 1988 passage of the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Children and Youth Education Act. It was named after Republican Senator Jacob Javits who was America’s first Jewish senator. Javits died in 1986 but his long-time commitment to gifted education caused his former colleagues to name the act for him.

The Javits program is unique in its emphasis. Through a coordinated mixture of scientifically based research and demonstration projects, the Javits program researches how to identify and foster underrepresented gifted students, and how to implement this research in elementary and secondary schools. Generally, the Javits program embraces in-depth research, demonstration projects, and school training to better serve the educational needs of gifted students.

Criticism Mounts

Typical of gifted education criticism is an article in Psychology Today, “The Embarrassing Secret About Gifted Programs,” by Doctor Jenny Grant Rankin. She calls for changes noting:

“Students are significantly less likely to receive gifted services if they are African American or Hispanic than if they are white, particularly when they have white teachers. For example, black students are half as likely as white students to be labeled gifted, even when their test scores are comparable (Grissom and Redding, 2016).”

In 2024, Natalie Calero wrote “Dissecting the Gate Program: A deep dive into the good, bad, and ugly.” The paper was her Liberal Studies Capstone at Chico State University for Dr. Maris Thompson. Chico State is sometimes derisively called “drunken state” but it is actually a very successful school in the California state system. Interestingly, two of Ronald Reagan’s key staff members graduated from there; Mike Deavers and Ed Rollins.

Calero noted, “My findings suggest that the Gate Program unintentionally promotes social segregation and burnout amongst exceptional students.” She cites research showing students feeling isolated and lonely once put in the program and being mocked by peers. Students felt because of the label teachers expected them not to need help. (Pages 2 and 8)

In one school she studied, students were pulled out of class for English and Math but were in their classes for everything else. In this case, student felt the program was fun and gave them more say in their education. They were no longer bored in class and did not feel isolated. It was the conviction of students that this was a superior system and that they would not want a full-time program. (Pages 11-12)

Calero concludes:

“There is a hope to continue these programs but make them more equitable. I do not believe this is a viable option as having these programs continues to promote segregation within the education system. This leads to my second limitation which is my personal bias, that these programs are not salvageable.” (Page 15)

Conclusions

My personal experience in the classroom leads me to side with Katie Arnold-Ratliff’s opinion. I met many precocious students but only one student in 15-years that I felt was truly gifted. From discussions with other teachers, I heard about two more students at our high school that were likely gifted. In other words, I believe that less that 0.1% of students are truly gifted. The rest of that 3% cited in the Maryland report were probably excellent students but not gifted.

Matthew Yglesias has confidence in testing to identify gifted students. While clearly good students can be identified by standardized testing, the problem is that equally gifted students are missed by these tests.

I think a better approach to dealing with gifted students is differentiation. Good students should be given challenges to work on while in the same class that has students who may be struggling to read. It can be done and money for gifted education should go toward training all teachers how to differentiate instruction and to developing strategies and lessons for this purpose.

I can certainly relate to Natalie Calero’s conclusion that gifted and talented programs “are not salvageable.” However, I do disagree. I feel our approach needs to change and the practice of isolating students needs to be abandoned. Remember gifted students are still children and they still need socialization.

Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not figured out how best to deal with our brightest students. This discussion need to be expanded.

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Excellent Book: “Dystopian School Tales”

6 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/5/2026

Like the above title indicates, I was quite taken by Thomas Courtney’s book, Dystopian School Tales. I liked it so much, I went to Amazon to write a glowing report for the book and found that they will not accept book reviews on it. The book is published by The Educator’s Room out of Atlanta, Georgia which is a relatively small publishing company with a teacher friendly positive history. Why Amazon has locked the book from anyone commenting on it is a bit of a mystery. I would not expect any fraudulent malarkey to be perpetrated by this writer-educator or his publisher.

The book is subtitled “12 Visions of an American Education, Dismantled.” Courtney has been an elementary school teacher for the past thirty years and is a surprisingly gifted and creative writer. He has written 12 fictional stories that are scenarios depicting possibilities that could develop in the next few years. At the end of each of these stories, he documents what has happened, what is happening and what might happen in a future related to the sketches.

I found this structure to be very imaginative. The stories are short engaging tales which at their conclusion allow the author to cite Supreme Court actions, news accounts, history, plus local, state and federal actions relating to the yarn.

Mrs. Foster’s Loyalty Test

This is the title of the second of the twelve dystopian stories. In order to give readers a sense of the book, I picked one story to write about. The main reason for picking this story is a comment in Courtney’s notes at the end of the book. He discusses how difficult it was to finalize the collection writing, “On several occasions, I had to rewrite entire portions of these tales, because what I’d thought was dystopian, had already happened.” (Page 259)

Courtney continued:

“For example, I wrote the story, Mrs. Foster’s Loyalty Exam while I was on a fellowship in Costa Rica. At the time, I had no idea that there could actually be such a thing given to teachers. I had no idea that such an exam had begun to be used for teachers new to the state of Oklahoma from places like my state, California.” (Page 259-260)

Mrs. Foster is depicted as a woman interviewing for a teaching job in Oklahoma. Her interview is conducted by a woman from the Oklahoma Department of Patriotism and Family Values (ODP). When inquiring about who sees her responses to the ODP questions and how they are maintained, she is curtly informed that in Oklahoma they protect children from wokeness. The ODP examiner declares, “Since 2025, the great state of Oklahoma has screened potential teaching candidates from woke states like California and in your case, New York.” (Page 20)

“Question twelve, Mrs. Foster, do you recognize the ten commandments as a source of societal good?” (Page 18)

“Question thirteen, Mrs. Foster, should you be selected for employment, are you willing to state under oath that there are only two genders, male and female?” (Page 20)

The final inquiry says, “Please give an example of radical leftist ideology that you have reported to the New York Department of Education before arriving here in Oklahoma.” Mrs. Foster says she never filed a report in the seven years she worked there. (Page 21)

“What about DEI, or gender confusion?” No. (Page 21)

“In all of the years you taught in New York, you never once saw a Title nine violation of gender confusion in your school? You never once saw a Title 1 violation of DEI?” No. (Pages 21 to 22)

Past: Courtney shares that the loyalty test tale is more than dystopian it is also an experience from American history. He recommends as a reference Many are the Crimes; McCarthyism in America by Ellen Schrecker amongst other books. (Page 23)

Another data point from Courtney is the Waldorf statement. In 1947, the heads of the motion picture industry met at the Waldorf hotel in New York city to denounce the Hollywood Ten who were being held in contempt by the US Congress. They said in part, “We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ, and we will not re-employ any of the 10 until such time as he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist.”

Present: Courtney notes that Politicians wanting to circumvent constitutional rights can do so with oaths or by requiring exams. These can be used to filter out non-Christians, liberals or homosexuals. In 2025, Oklahoma hired PragerU to create a test designed to eliminate “radical woke ideology.” (Page 26)

Future: Without a Department of Education to enforce the rights of students and teachers, aren’t more exams like those in Oklahoma inevitable? With the failure of the Supreme Court to uphold student rights, states are free to use these types of application questions to simply deny those teachers whose politics they don’t like. Today, that means those who are: not MAGA enough, not Christian enough, not straight enough. (Page 28)

Final Thoughts

I read most books about education. Often teachers and former teachers like myself write about terrible education policies like the billionaire financed privatization of public schools. They describe the harm being done to communities and students all driven by either a profit motive or a religious agenda. The books are important and they highlight important things but they are often quite grim.

I give Thomas Courtney high marks for his clever approach to the issues plaguing public schools, students and teachers. His twelve fictional stories are entertaining and far from grim and they add levity to the undermining of public education. However, in reality, the attack on free universal public education is also an attack on American democracy.

Ronald Reagan began the attack on public education with the publication of the polemic, “A Nation at Risk.” This set the table for more disingenuous attacks. At the same time, Reagan gave the fringe lunatic, Milton Friedman, legitimacy. He had written a mostly ignored 1955 essay calling for the privatization of public education and for government to get out of the education business.

Courtney’s book takes on the education policies pushed by the soap scammers from Michigan in a way that I hope the public can read and digest. Without mentioning Charles Koch or the Walton family, he uses his creative short stories to bring their destructive agenda to light.

I think everyone who reads Dystopian School Tales will enjoy it and get a much deeper understanding of the crisis facing America.

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