Advocates of school choice pay scant attention to gifted education, accelerated learning, and other forms of advanced education — those services that provide students with opportunities to go beyond the normal, grade-level curriculum. These advanced services are both research-supported and common sense: If a student is capable of “doing more” in school, they should have every opportunity to learn. If forced to “learn” things they already know, what’s the point of them going to school?
Yet public schools often provide too little access to advanced learning, often because educators and policymakers underestimate both demand and need. In a series of studies, researchers have found that a surprisingly large percentage of students are working above grade level. One study suggests 24% of students are learning at least two grade levels above their current grade in reading, and 11% in math. Another study estimates that over a third of middle-grade students are above grade level in reading, and 8% in math. Those statistics reflect students already performing at advanced levels, not the much larger group of students who are capable of doing advanced work if given the opportunity. Put in economic terms, this is hardly a niche market.
With only 20% of states having funded mandates for gifted education, most states having no requirement for teachers to receive training in advanced instruction, and many districts moving to reduce advanced options, it is not surprising that families of bright students are shopping for better educational options. Indeed, polling by EdChoice finds nearly two-thirds of parents (63%) say it is very or extremely important for their child’s school to offer advanced academic classes. One-third of parents say they would be very likely to move their child to a different school if their current school eliminated advanced classes.
Many families are indeed voting with their feet, opting for charters, private schools, homeschool co-ops, microschools, and online schools, among other options outside of the traditional public system. The advent of the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit should facilitate even more families exercising options in pursuit of academic challenge. We need better data on the number of advanced students exercising choice options, but we suspect it is already significant. For example, estimates of gifted students being homeschooled range from 50,000 to 140,000, and we suspect the total number of advanced students pursuing educational choice in some form exceeds 1 million students. Yet advocates of educational pluralism and choice rarely talk about advanced learning.
SCHOOL CHOICE IS WINNING. IT’S TIME TO DOUBLE DOWN
Couple strong public support with our understanding of how many students would benefit from advanced education, and it becomes difficult to understand why choice advocates have not focused more attention on advanced education. It is a lost opportunity, and it is further damaging because the lack of attention threatens to dampen competition that would nudge public districts to strengthen and expand their advanced offerings.
Parents and students do not believe that being appropriately challenged in school is a luxury. They are highly motivated to get access to the advanced services they deserve, and we believe they are driving school choice behavior. It’s time for choice advocates to catch up.
Leah Raymond is a recent graduate of Georgetown University and an intern at the National Research Center for Advanced Education at Johns Hopkins, where Jonathan Plucker is the director of the Center and Professor of Education.