Self-Concept Unmasked · 2007-10-09 · Fall 2007 • Tempo • Texas Association for the Gifted...

TEMPOTexas association for the Gifted and talented • Member, National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)

Fall 2007 • Volume XXVII, Issue 4

Self-Concept

Unmasked

2 Fall 2007 • Tempo • Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented

3Fall 2007 • Tempo • Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented

Fall 2007 • Volume XXVII, Issue 4

TEMPO EdItorDr. Jennifer L. Jolly

PrEsIdEntDr. Keith Yost

PrEsIdEnt-ElEctAnn Studdard

FIrst VIcE-PrEsIdEntDr. Laura Mackay

sEcond VIcE-PrEsIdEntSheri Plybon

thIrd VIcE-PrEsIdEntJoanna Baleson

sEcrEtary/trEasurErRobert Thompson

ImmEdIatE Past-PrEsIdEntRaymond “Rick” Peters

EXEcutIVE dIrEctorDianne Hughes

The Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (TAGT) is a nonprofit organization of parents and professionals promoting appropriate education for gifted and talented students in the state of Texas.

TAGT Tempo is the official journal of the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented. It is published four times a year in January, April, July, and October. The subscription is a benefit for TAGT members. Annual dues are $49.

Material appearing in Tempo may be reprinted unless otherwise noted. When copying an article please cite Tempo and TAGT as the source. We appreciate copies of publications containing Tempo reprints.

Address correspondence concerning the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (including subscription questions) to TAGT, 1524 S. IH 35, Suite 205, Austin, Texas, 78704. Call TAGT at 512/499-8248, FAX 512/499-8264.

ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED: Please notify TAGT if you are moving or if your mailing address has changed. TAGT publications are sent via third-class mail and are not forwarded by the Post Office. Be sure to renew your membership. You will not receive TAGT publications or mailings after your membership expiration date.

OpiniOns expressed by individual authOrs dO nOt necessarily represent Official pOsitiOns Of taGt.

From the PresidentKeith Yost

Executive director’s updateDianne Hughes

From the EditorJennifer L. Jolly

a nation deceived: how schoolshold Back america’s Brightest studentsNicholas Colangelo

social self-concept and acceptanceof Gifted studentsDanielle Felger

a Parent’s Guide to taGt’s annual Professional development conferenceMary Lovell

Giftedness, disadvantage, & lawCynthia V. Ward

What the research says about PerfectionismAshley Minton, Krystal Goree, & Susan K. Johnsen

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Nick Colangelo, Ph.D. is the Myron & Jacqueline Blank Professor of Gifted Education and Director of the Belin-Blank Center in the College of Education at The University of Iowa. He edited two texts: New Voices in Counseling the Gifted (with Ronald Zaffrann) and Handbook of Gifted Education, Editions I, II, and III (with Gary Davis). He co-authored, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students, with Susan Assouline and Miraca Gross.

Danielle Felger, M. A., is a first grade teacher with St. Bernard Parish Public Schools in Louisiana. She earned Master’s of Arts in Education and certification in Gifted and Talented from Louisiana State University. She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education.

Krystal Goree, M.Ed., is the director of clinical practice and teaches classes in gifted and talented education at Baylor University. She has worked in the field of gifted education for

more than 20 years in the roles of parent, teacher, consultant, presenter, and program administrator. She serves on state com-mittees and provides consultation and program evaluation for school districts. In addition to presenting at state and national conferences, she has authored or coauthored articles and book chapters. She is past-president of the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented and serves as senior editor and product reviewer for Gifted Child Today.

Susan K. Johnsen, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Baylor University. She directs the Ph. d. Program and programs related to gifted and talented education. She is past-president of the Texas Association for Gifted and Talented. She has written more than 100 articles, monographs, technical reports, and books related to gifted education. She is a frequent presenter at international, national, and state confer-ences. She is editor of Gifted Child Today and serves on the editorial boards of Gifted Child Quarterly. She is the author of Identifying Gifted Students: A Practical Guide, and coauthor of the Independent Study Program and three tests that are used in identifying gifted students: Test of Mathematical Abilities for Gifted Students (TOMAGS), Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI-3), and Screening Assessment for Gifted Students (SAGES-2).

Mary Lovell, M. B. A., is the current president of Carrollton-Farmers Branch Association for the Gifted and Talented (C-FB AGT). She is the proud mother of Vika Lovell, a student in C-FB ISD’s LEAP program for highly gifted students. Mary earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. She provides consulting services to the energy industry in addition to her community service ventures. She can be reached at [email protected].

Ashley Minton, B.S., received an undergraduate degree in elementary and gifted education from Baylor University. She is a graduate student in the Department of Educational Psychology at Baylor University and is also working on certification as a reading specialist. She can be reached at [email protected].

Cynthia V. Ward, J.D. is a professor of law at the College of William and Mary. She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley and her juris doctorate from Yale University.

contrIButInG authors

The school bell rang at 7:45 a.m. Notebooks in hand, an-ticipation and excitement evident in their eyes, 1,300 stu-dents suddenly flooded the halls of Lanier Middle School in Houston, TX. Looking intently in the hallways for a roster with their name and homeroom assignment, students made their way to their designated rooms. Wearing their Purple Pup Lanier t-shirts, teachers with warm smiles on their faces were stationed outside their doors to greet students as they arrived. Although this was the scene at Lanier Middle School on the morning of August 27, 2007, this same scenerio played out across Texas. Yes, folks believe it or not, the 2007–2008 school year has begun.

With the start of a new school year, I always take time to reflect on my own staff development needs. Over the course of the past 16 years, I have included TAGT’s Annual Professional Development Conference as a crucial compo-nent of my ongoing staff development. Regardless of the role in which I serve, teacher, coordinator, director, or college professor, I always find the conference uplifting and refresh-ing. It is a great opportunity to learn and grow as a gifted educator. In addition, the annual conference also provides many wonderful opportunities to network and visit with friends and acquaintances I have made over the years.

The 30th Annual TAGT Professional Development Conference, Gifted Students: Carrying the Torch of Excellence, is sure to be the best yet. This conference, to be held November 14–16, 2007, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX, will feature such key-note speakers as Dr. Nicholas Colangelo, professor at the University of Iowa and coauthor of the ground-breaking study, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students. Also, North Wood, world-renowned vio-linist, will provide a keynote address on the topic, Solving the Mystery of Talent. In addition, he will perform several musical pieces for the audience during his address.

Moreover, the preconference schedule includes a wide ar-ray of presentations. Dr. Colangelo will present, The Mind and Heart of Giftedness: Understanding the Academic, Social, and Family Factors That Impact Gifted Children and Adolescents. In addition, there will be a session, Working With Gifted Students in AP and Pre-AP Courses: A Hands-On Approach, directed toward AP English, math, science, and social studies teachers. For elementary teachers, the famous and creative Bag Ladies will conduct a full-day session. Not only are these ladies entertaining, they provide many hands-on activities for teachers to take back to the classroom. For all preconference sessions and additional conference information, please visit the TAGT’s Web site at http://www.txgifted.org.

Finally, I am challenging each of you to give to the TAGT Scholarship Fund. Every year, TAGT provides approximately $35,000 in scholarships for gifted and talented students. As a result, many of these scholarship recipients are able to attend summer enrichment programs and accelerated academic programs to further their growth and meet their full potential. This being the 30th-year anniversary, I chal-lenge each of you to give at least $30 toward the scholarship fund. By doing so, you will help to grow our scholarship fund and allow TAGT to give more scholarships to our brightest students.

Although the 2007–2008 school year is off and running, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on your staff development needs. After careful consideration, I am sure you will want to include the 30th Annual TAGT Professional Development Conference as part of your staff development. Please take the time now to register for the best gifted and talented conference ever. I truly look forward to seeing you in Houston.

frOm the presidentby DR. KeITH YoST

Fall 2007 • Tempo • Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented 5

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Fall 2007 • Tempo • Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented

texas assOciatiOn fOr the Gifted and talented2007 executive bOard

PresidentDr. Keith YostHouston [email protected]

President-electAnn StuddardFrisco [email protected]

First Vice-PresidentDr. Laura MackayIndependent [email protected]

Second Vice-PresidentSheri PlybonCarrollton Farmers Branch [email protected]

Third Vice-PresidentJoanna BalesonC. P. I. [email protected]

Secretary/TreasurerRobert ThompsonParent of Gifted [email protected]

Immediate Past- President

Raymond “Rick” PetersLockheed Martin [email protected]

executive DirectorDianne [email protected]

I Patricia RendonRegion I [email protected]

II Tracy RodriguezCorpus Christi ISDCollegiate High [email protected]

III Alexandra Schoenemann

Yoakum [email protected]

IV Lynette BreedloveSpring Branch [email protected]

V Dr. Ron SimsLumberton [email protected]

VI Stacey elstonMagnolia [email protected]

VII Joe StokesSabine [email protected]

VIII Sandra StromParis ISD/Paris [email protected]

IX Missy MayfieldRegion IX [email protected]

X Marilyn SwansonGifted Students Institute, [email protected]

XI Dr. Richard SinclairTX Academy of Math & [email protected]

XII Laura YoungKilleen ISDClear Creek [email protected]

XIII Michelle SwainRound Rock [email protected]

XIV Dr. Cecelia BoswellAustin Creek Education [email protected]

XV Debbie LopezSanta Rita ElementarySan Angelo [email protected]

XVI Paula ColemanBorger [email protected]

XVII Claire KingLubbock [email protected]

XVIII Beverly JeffcoatRegion 18 [email protected]

XIX Lynne DeLeonSocorro [email protected]

XX Jose LagunaParent of Gifted [email protected]

Editorial BoardTempo Editor Dr. Jennifer L. Jolly [email protected]

Editorial Board Members

Karen Fitzgerald [email protected]

Tina Forester [email protected]

Todd Kettler [email protected]

Dr. Joyce E. Kyle Miller [email protected]

Jennifer Robins [email protected]

Dr. Gail Ryser [email protected]

transitiOn and updatesby Dianne Hughes

A new school year has begun and with it comes the challenge of transition for edu-cators, parents, students, and, of course, TAGT. Although staff is busy planning for the fall annual conference, the work of the office is calmer in the summer and the phone becomes a phantom to its school-year persona. The closer time gets to the start of school, activity at TAGT picks up and the phone once again con-nects us to the needs and concerns of our members and parents of gifted students. Interestingly, the majority of inquiries this year have come from parents of pre-schoolers anxious to have their children tested in anticipation that they may face the dilemma of finding a school environ-ment appropriate for the challenge of their very gifted child.

You may notice new names and voices on TAGT e-mails and phone responses. David Estlund is coordinating TAGT mar-keting and communication activities and LaShawnda Bernucho is managing mem-bership, conference registrations, and da-tabase troubleshooting. As you also are aware, TAGT seeks a new Tempo editor to replace Jennifer Jolly who will be the new editor of NAGC’s publication, Parenting for High Potential. Transition surrounds us as we begin a new school year.

Over the summer, members of the Research Division worked on the survey of GT administrators about local school practices of identification, program de-livery, and accountability. This was a sig-nificant project that is still being analyzed in order to identify additional research, policy initiatives, or articulating standards of best practices. We are appreciative of

the work of the Research Division and plan to have an executive summary ready for the Annual Professional Development Conference in November. My hope is that this work will open new opportunities for TAGT to partner with universities and businesses to build data resources sup-portive of sound gifted education policy and practice.

This year’s conference marks the 30th anniversary of TAGT’s service and deliv-ery of quality training focused on gifted education. An outstanding schedule of professional development sessions is posted on the Web site to help you plan in advance. One change that we have had to make to the schedule is the elimination of Saturday sessions due to the cost of facili-ties to the attendance ratio. Consequently, the schedule is packed with sessions through Friday until 5:15 p.m., so that you can maximize your conference experi-ence. For those from out of town staying at the hotel, Saturday offers plenty of time to enjoy Houston’s wonderful museums, shopping, and restaurants. We encourage you to get your hotel and conference reg-istrations in as soon as possible.

You may be aware that the U.S. House of Education and Labor Committee has been meeting to review and outline revi-sions to the No Child Left Behind Act. Preliminary considerations include:• Allowing states to usemore than a

single test for accountability, which could include graduation rates, dropout rates, college enrollment rates, successful completion of end-of-course exams for college prep courses, assessments in content sub-jects, and performance improvement

of the lowest and highest performing students in the school.

• Theuseofgrowthmodelstomeasureachievement gains of the same group of students each year as they move through the education system.

• Ease the requirement thatnomorethan 3% of students with disabilities may take alternative assessments with modified standards.

• Modify sanctions for schools thatmake adequate annual progress using two distinct tracks—one for priority schools that need minor interven-tion and the other for high-priority schools that need more substantial assistance.

The idea that the committee recognizes the need for growth for the highest per-forming students appears encouraging, but this is a preliminary study and will undergo many iterations before there is an official House document to put before Congress.

The good news about the 2007–2008 school year is that there will be no state Legislative Session. Consequently, it is a great time to meet with your legislators while they are in their home districts and let them know of your concerns about the direction of gifted education in Texas.

We look forward to a great Annual Professional Development Conference and hope to see you in November in Houston.


frOm the editOrJennifer L. Jolly

The advertisement for a Tempo editor on TAGT’s Web site may have alerted many of you to my resignation as editor. It is a bittersweet time as I am leaving to be the new editor of NAGC’s Parenting for High Potential. I am very energized and excited by the opportunities PHP present me, however, I will miss the gifted community in Texas. The past 3 years have been a won-derful learning experience and have introduced me to many dedicated teachers, parents, administrators, and university per-sonnel across the state. Without your efforts and contributions, Tempo would not be possible.

This issue of Tempo includes articles focusing on social self-concept and acceptance, perfectionism, and perspectives of gifted education from outside the field. Felger dispels the myth

of gifted students having a poor self-concept and being unac-cepted by their peers. With an outsiders’ perspective, Ward suggests an alternative area of support for gifted programming and research. Minton, Goree, and Johnsen present a decade’s worth of research literature on the link between giftedness and perfectionism.

Also included is a piece by Nick Colangelo, keynote speaker at TAGT’s Annual Professional Development Conference. He gives Tempo readers a sneak peak of the content to be addressed during his address. Colangelo is representative of the quality of speakers, sessions, and workshops available to attendees at this year’s conference. The conference returns to Houston this year and offers one of the strongest programs to date.

Fall 2007 • Tempo • Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented8


It’s Tuesday morning, math class, fifth grade and the teacher is demonstrating a complex word problem that requires per-centages and multiple steps in division to arrive at the answer. The material is new and not easy. Some of the students are bewildered. Others are attentive, though tentative. However, there is one student in the class who hardly seems to be fol-lowing at all—not because of difficulty, but because of ease. Although she has the capacity to do algebra with eighth-graders and test scores that indicate readiness to move on, her chronological age says, “Not so fast.”

That script is played out in classrooms across America—only the characters and scenery change. Students well above the academic ability and readiness of their grade-mates who want to be and should be accelerated to a higher level are kept in place by attitudes and policies that are not based on the research. Our two-volume re-port, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students, spon-sored by the John Templeton Foundation, is based on the abundant research on ac-celeration covering the past 50 years. The essence of the report is that America’s schools routinely avoid academic accelera-tion, the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students. The research

is uniformly positive, and is in stark con-trast to the negative attitudes, which result in anti-acceleration practices. This report highlights the curious dilemma wherein attitudes and personal perceptions trump evidence.

Acceleration is defined as an educational intervention that moves students through an educational program at a faster than usual rate. It means matching the level, complexity, and pace of the curriculum with the readiness of the student. A Nation Deceived delineates 18 types of acceleration that are organized into two broad catego-ries: Subject-Based and Grade-Based.

Subject-Based Acceleration demands cognitive ability—the work is faster paced and more complex—but not necessar-ily social/emotional maturity. It allows gifted learners to master material beyond their expected age or grade level while remaining with their age and grade peers. Advanced Placement (AP) is an example in which the student takes college-level courses while still in high school and re-mains to graduate with her class. Grade-Based Acceleration requires both cogni-tive ability and emotional maturity or readiness. In this type of acceleration the student does not remain with his or her chronological classmates. Grade skipping is an example.

A National Survey on A Nation Deceived

A Nation Deceived had immediate im-pact after its September, 2004, publication, with articles in Time and Education Week as well as newspapers and radio coverage across the country. September 2007 is the 3-year anniversary of the release of the re-port A Nation Deceived. We are using this anniversary to make a national assessment of the impact of the report. You will have the opportunity to participate in a brief (less than 10 minutes), online survey to get your perspective on what impact A Nation Deceived has had on gifted education and education in general. TAGT received a link to the survey on September 1, 2007. You also may take the survey by going to http://www.nationdeceived.org.

The Templeton National Report on Acceleration

“A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students”

Nicholas Colangelo, Keynote SpeakerThe 30th TAGT Annual Professional Development Conference

Nerd. Geek. Loner. Social outcast. These are all common stereotypes of the gifted child, but are they true? Do gifted students have more social difficulties than their nongifted peers? A number of stud-ies have investigated this topic in an at-tempt to better understand the experience of gifted children. Social self-concept, so-cial status, psychological characteristics, and special needs of gifted children all impact the social experience of the gifted child. Gifted children’s emotional charac-teristics and unique needs contribute to their atypical understandings of the world around them. However, these distinctive understandings do not necessarily cause social ostracism. Despite the common ste-reotypes, gifted children generally possess higher social competence than their non-gifted peers due to their advanced func-

tioning, high self-concept, and greater use of problem-solving strategies.

Self-concept is a commonly used term that consists of many different compo-nents. Byrne (as cited in Hébert, 2000) defined self-concept as “our attitudes, feelings, and knowledge about our abili-ties, skills, appearance, and social accept-ability” (p. 107). These attitudes have a profound impact on an individual’s daily activities and social competence. Chan (2001) emphasized the importance of a positive self-concept in promoting mental health. Self-concept, including the social dimensions of a person’s life, has proven to be an important factor in later suc-cess (Caplan, Henderson, Henderson, & Fleming, 2002). They demonstrated that a positive self-concept in high-achieving in-dividuals predicts academic achievement

and successful adjustment in college. As a result, teachers need to better understand and promote the positive self-concepts of gifted children in order to nurture them to reach their fullest potential.

In order to accomplish this, the needs of gifted students, including self-concepts and social competence, need to be further addressed by schools. A gifted student’s social self-concept has great implications for a student’s acceptance among peers. Gifted students possess higher self-con-cepts than their nongifted peers (Bain & Bell, 2004; Konstantopoulos, Modi, & Hedges, 2001). Bain and Bell (2004) re-counted higher scores for gifted students on overall self-concept and three of four specific social aspects of self-concept, including physical appearance, peer rela-tions, and physical ability. The remain-


and Acceptance of Gifted StudentsBy Danielle Felger

Social Self-Concept


ing aspect, parent relations, showed no difference between gifted and nongifted students (Bain, Choate, & Bliss, 2004). The lack of difference between these two groups supports the notion that gifted students are at least equal to their peers on that particular aspect of self-concept, rather than the common misconceptions of gifted students as suffering from lower self-concept. Konstantopoulos et al. (2001) found that students identified as gifted scored almost twice as high on the self-concept index as nongifted students. Similar results were found for self-confi-dence, self-esteem, self-reliance, and self-control, indicating that gifted students hold positive perceptions of themselves.

Although gifted students hold high social self-concepts, there appears to be a drop in scores during the junior high school pe-riod (Chan, 2001; Lewis & Knight, 2000). Although scores drop, this does not indi-cate that gifted students undergo greater stress than nongifted students during this developmental span. This age appears to be a time of social conflict, resulting in a significant drop in self-concept for all students (Lewis & Knight, 2000). Even though students may face additional social conflict in adolescence as compared to ear-lier years, gifted students do not seem to be affected any more than the average non-gifted child (Norman, Ramsay, Roberts, & Martay, 2000).

While self-concept involves an indi-vidual’s inner attitudes and feelings, the individual can be greatly influenced by the opinions and actions of his or her peers. Greenspan (2000) explained, “The way in which essential others in one’s life respond to these traits [of giftedness] influences the role the traits play in the self experi-ence” (p. 181). Therefore, the relationships gifted students have with their peers, both gifted and nongifted, contribute to their self-concept. Bain et al. (2006) conducted a survey of 285 human development and educational psychology undergraduate students. Of these participants, 77% be-lieved gifted students were more likely than nongifted students to have social problems with peers. However, studies involving the gifted students themselves indicate that gifted students do not have abnormal difficulty with friendships (Bain & Bell, 2004; Chan, 2001-2003; Norman et al., 2000). The largest difference be-tween gifted and nongifted students in

regard to self-concept was peer relations, with gifted students showing significantly more positive scores in this area. Gifted students appear to have greater perceived friendships with peers, discrediting the stereotype of gifted students as social outcasts when compared to nongifted students (Bain & Bell, 2004).

Social issues with peers are not generally perceived as problematic from the per-spective of the gifted child. Chan (2001) classified three groups of gifted students in his study of Chinese 7–12 grade stu-dents. The largest group, representing the average gifted child, scored highest on the Close Friendship and Social Acceptance measures of self-concept, suggesting minimal stress experienced in these ar-eas. In a later study, similar results were found, with peer relationships perceived as less problematic than other areas, such as intense feelings and involvement or unchallenging schoolwork (Chan 2003). Gifted students experienced peer-related problems, such as greater envy of non-academic talent (Massé & Gagné, 2002), however, these problems do not appear to significantly affect gifted students’ social adjustment, based on their higher self-concepts and general social acceptance from their peers.

Popularity is another part of social ac-ceptance but, unlike many of the scores for self-concept and social concerns that are self-reported, popularity is often described in studies directly through ratings of students’ peers. Bell and Schindler (as cited in Bain & Bell, 2004) found that students rated gifted peers higher in popularity than their nongifted classmates. Norman, et al. (2000) ex-plain, “Gifted students usually enjoy high social status, especially in the elementary years” (p. 34). The popularity of gifted students further exemplifies their social acceptance through the confirmation of their peers.

The emotional health of the gifted child can also contribute to his or her self-concept and social acceptance. Although gifted individuals are often thought of as frail and emotionally unstable, research shows that gifted children are actually emotionally healthier than their non-gifted counterparts (LoCicero & Ashby, 2000). Richards, Encel, and Shute (2003) examined emotional adjustment through reports from parents, teachers, and chil-

dren. Gifted students were found to have higher confidence in their own abilities and fewer tendencies towards depression than nongifted students. “Rather than being a source of vulnerability, the find-ings are consistent with the interpretation that intellectual giftedness is a protective factor” (Richards et al., 2003, p. 160). Being identified as gifted can actually be considered a strength that helps a child’s emotional stability, rather than a weak-ness causing additional problems. Hence, gifted students’ emotional adjustment is often as good as or better than their nongifted peers (LoCicero et al., 2000; Norman et al., 2000; Preuss & Dubow, 2004; Richards et al., 2003).

This is not to say gifted students’ needs can be ignored by schools because they seem to be coping sufficiently. They have unique needs, both in academic and af-fective areas. Their heightened emotional sensitivity (Chan, 2003; Greenspan, 2000) may cause them to approach their experi-ences in life differently than the average person (Greenspan, 2000). They often are more aware of the intricacies of the world around them, which is a result of this in-creased sensitivity to experiences. Gifted students have confirmed their problem-atic view of intense emotional feelings in previous research (Chan, 2003). If not handled properly, these intense feelings could lead to undue stress. As Preuss and Dubow (2004) explained, gifted students, although well-adjusted socially, cannot be expected to cope with stress without the proper guidance. Not all gifted children possess high self-concepts and social stability, and these children may require added support.

There is a critical need for teachers to address the social needs of their gifted students, as well as their academic needs (Chan, 2003; Edmunds & Edmunds, 2005; Konstantopoulos et al., 2001). Edmunds and Edmunds (2005) suggest,

Given the emotional challenges of the adolescent period, perhaps, then, the focus for the education of the pre-adolescent and adolescent gifted child should be on recognizing and support-ing the child’s heightened sensitivity, or emotionality, rather than merely focusing on curricula learned or talents exhibited. (p. 77)


All teachers need to understand the areas of self-concept, including social acceptance, before they can help their students. As mentioned earlier, not all gifted students are well-adjusted, so group sharing sessions could help students improve their social skills and self-concepts (Chan, 2003).

Without disregarding the social needs of gifted students, there is evidence to sug-gest their social success. A variety of fac-tors have contributed to their overall social success and high social self-concepts. One reason for their success can be attributed to their greater use of problem-solving skills (Preuss & Dubow, 2004). Preuss and Dubow (2004) indicated higher levels of adjustment for students who rely more heavily on problem-solving strategies. Gifted students demonstrated overwhelm-ing use of problem-solving strategies to cope with academic and social stress (Preuss & Dubow, 2004) and have been shown to have greater social competence (Richards et al., 2003), which increases their confidence in social situations.

Gifted students also are more likely to attribute their social success to their own effort, rather than natural ability and be-lieve that if they try hard enough, they will be able to succeed; social competence is not simply something with which you are born (Bain & Bell, 2004). Bain and Bell (2004) found that gifted students “ap-pear to be functioning in the self-concept realm at levels above their high-achieving peers and to be attributing social suc-cesses and failures in a pattern that pro-motes responsibility for interactions” (pp. 176–177). This higher level of functioning is another factor in the overall social suc-cess of gifted students.

The support of teachers and the school also can contribute to the social success of gifted students. Identification, in and of itself, may help gifted children maintain already high self-concepts (Bain & Bell, 2004). Students that have been identified as gifted often receive additional support and specialized attention to meet their needs. Supportive adults and teachers who interact with gifted students have the ability to influence the students’ opinions of themselves (Hébert, 2000). Hébert (2000) states:

Teachers who consistently reinforce the message that ability combined with hard work will result in success

have a powerful impact on students . . . earlier teachers delivered the message that these young men had the ability to achieve success, and, with hard work and effort, they could reach their goals in life. (p. 110)

Future research needs to explore how the classroom environment and teacher encouragement influences gifted stu-dents. Different classroom settings need to be examined in order to determine the best environment for gifted students to develop socially with both their gifted and nongifted peers.

Gifted students’ social skills documented in the research literature have helped dispel the common myth of gifted students as social outcasts. Evidence of greater positive self-concept, which is shown to be impor-tant in a student’s later success in life, and emotional stability has been discovered more frequently among gifted students than nongifted students. Peer relationships are not believed to be problematic for gifted children. In fact, gifted students showed much more positive scores than nongifted students in the area of peer relations. This social success of gifted students has been attributed to problem-solving skills, high functioning in the self-concept realm, su-perior social competence, and supportive teachers or adults who encourage their students’ success. With public awareness of the social experience of the gifted child, the negative stereotypes of giftedness will lessen along with stereotypes such as nerds, geeks, loners, or social outcast.

References

Bain, S. K., & Bell, S. M. (2004). Social self-concept, social attributions, and peer relationships in fourth, fifth, and sixth graders who are gifted com-pared to high achievers. Gifted Child Quarterly, 48, 167–178.

Bain, S. K., Choate, S. M., & Bliss, S. L. (2004). Perceptions of developmental, social, and emotional issues in gifted-ness: Are they realistic?.Roeper Review, 29, 41–48.

Caplan, S. M., Henderson, C. E., Henderson, J., & Fleming, D.L. (2002). Socioemotional factors contributing to adjustment among early-entrance col-lege students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 46, 124–134.

Chan, D. W. (2001). Global and specific self-concepts of gifted adolescents in Hong Kong. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 24, 344–364.

Chan, D. W. (2003). Assessing adjustment problems of gifted students in Hong Kong: The development of the student adjustment problems inventory. Gifted Child Quarterly, 47, 107–117.

Edmunds, A. L., & Edmunds, G. A. (2005). Sensitivity: A double-edged sword for the pre-adolescent and adolescent gifted child. Roeper Review, 27, 69–77.

Greenspan, T. S. (2000). The self-experi-ence of the gifted person: Theory and definitions. Roeper Review, 22, 176–181.

Hébert, T. P. (2000). Defining belief in self: Intelligent young men in an urban high school. Gifted Child Quarterly, 44, 91–114.

Konstantopoulos, S., Modi, M., & Hedges, L. V. (2001). Who are America’s gifted? American Journal of Education, 109, 344–381.

Lewis, J. D., & Knight, H. V. (2000). Self-concept in gifted youth: An in-vestigation employing the Piers-Harris subscales. Gifted Child Quarterly, 44, 45– 53.

LoCicero, K. A., & Ashby, J. S. (2000). Multidimensional perfectionism in middle school age gifted students: A comparison to peers from the general cohort. Roeper Review, 22, 182–185.

Massé, L., & Gagné, F. (2002). Gifts and talents as sources of envy in high school settings. Gifted Child Quarterly, 46, 15–29.

Norman, A. D., Ramsay, S. G., Roberts, J. L., & Martay, C. R. (2000). Effect of social setting, self-concept, and relative age on the social status of moderately and highly gifted students. Roeper Review, 23, 34–39.

Preuss, L. J., & Dubow, E. F. (2004). A comparison between intellectually gifted and typical children in their cop-ing responses to a school and a peer stressor. Roeper Review, 26, 105–111.

Richards, J., Encel, J., & Shute, R. (2003). The emotional and behavioural ad-justment of intellectually gifted ado-lescents: A multi-dimensional, multi-informant approach. High Ability Studies, 14, 153–164.

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A Parent’s Guide to TAGT’s Annual Conference

The TAGT Annual Professional Development Conference can be a rich and resourceful experience for any par-ent wanting to find out more about gifted and talented education in Texas. A com-mon misconception is that the confer-ence is just for teachers and counselors, however, there are numerous sessions geared toward parents. Whether your child attends private or public school or is homeschooled, there are plenty of sessions and resources available to meet their unique needs. This article repre-sents my collective experiences as a par-ent attending the conference. By nature, I am an information magnet. When my daughter was identified as gifted, I was lured by the prospect of learning more about this world of giftedness like a moth to the light.

Just as Goldilocks was challenged to find the just right chair, porridge and bed when she visited the Three Bears’ home, parents attending TAGT’s annual confer-ence often experience a similar dilemma when trying to decide on workshops and speakers, and visiting the vendors’ ex-

hibits. Do I attend the session on social-emotional needs or math? What about underachievement? How can I possibly make sense of all the vendor exhibits?

I often characterize my first TAGT conference as drinking from a fire hose: So many resources flooding me at one time. It was also challenging to make the best use of my time. Each of you will have your own method and plan. Rest as-sured that there is no one right answer to this challenge. The good news is that it is a terrific problem to have. I hope these suggestions will help you find your level of just right.

• First, consider your needs. Areyou wondering about identifica-tion? Preschool? Early elementary? Middle school? Secondary? Home school? Do you need some tips for addressing ADD? Review the pro-gram offerings. TAGT publishes a guide to preview the conference schedule on their Web site http:// http://txgi f ted.org/displaycom-mon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=134.

TAGT’s annual conference is also a terrific resource for parent groups or PTAs who are looking for programs and project ideas. The Potpourri ses-sion offers fun and educational ice breakers and crafts for parents and children.

• Next, mark your first and secondchoices for each time slot. This will give you flexibility in case speakers change or sessions are full. You’ll also have a chance to see if you’re missing something you really wanted or inadvertently doubled up. It helps to prioritize sessions. If you go with a friend, you can leverage your time and sessions by attending different sessions and exchanging the infor-mation afterwards.

• Review the speakers’ backgroundsand hometowns. You might find someone from your district or com-munity who would be willing to make a presentation at a parent meeting. I have found the workshop present-ers to be especially passionate about

Too Much? Too Little? Just Right?By Mary Lovell


15

helping gifted kids and their families. Sometimes choosing the workshop session you’ll attend by speaker, in-stead of by topic, will result in some positive connections.

• Take a chance. If there is a work-shop on something new, and you’re interested, mark it as a possibility. What’s the worst that could happen? During one timeslot, a workshop I really wanted to attend was standing room only! (Another clue). I popped into a room nearby and heard a ter-rific speaker (and also checked out if the standing room only workshop was offered again at another time – it was and I got there early!) Flexibility is a good thing. If you’re still uncer-

tain about what to attend, ask! TAGT staff, other parents, and teachers can be most helpful. The Parents Lounge is also available on each day of the conference.

• HowtoapproachtheVendorExhibits?Bring a light weight tote and a credit card or cash. You will certainly find something that you can’t live with-out. Many resources are available for science, math, reading, and more. My daughter’s favorite has been the snow. —a polymer that expands when it’s wet to resemble fluffy snow. When it dries, it returns to it’s small, laundry-detergent-grain size. We’ve played in the “snow” in July and even colored it! The Bag Ladies offer engaging, enter-

taining and useful crafts that delight parents, teachers, and children who like to walk on the creative side.

• Finally,sharewhatyou’vediscovered.It’s been said that to really learn something, you must teach it. When you share what you’ve learned with friends, other parents, teachers, and counselors, you’ll find that you retain more of what you experienced and connect with kindred spirits as well.

So, consider coming to Houston in November. Besides TAGT’s conference, Houston has some wonderful sites for children and adults alike. Together you will discover what is just right for you.

I’m a parent



More than a decade ago, the U.S. Department of Education warned of “a quiet crisis in educating talented stu-dents” across the nation.2 In its widely circulated report, National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent, the department concluded that “America demands less of top students than other countries do. At the same time our need for the highest levels of skills and exper-tise is on the rise, many of America’s most talented students are being denied a chal-lenging education.”3 The report attributed the weak performance of top American students to our national “ambivalence toward the intellect;” specifically toward our tendency to see intellectual achieve-ment as deeply threatening to our con-ception of equality.4 The tension between equality and excellence results in mixed messages to talented young people, the report argued: “Our society urges these young people to do well in school; but it also encourages them not to flaunt their intelligence and, in some cases, to avoid high grades and excellent academic achievement altogether.”5 The report out-lined a “vision for excellent schools” under which school curricula would be designed to “realize each student’s potential, and develop outstanding talent” and in which “achieving success for all students is not equated with achieving the same results for all students.”6

In American public school education, recent reports indicate that the long-standing tension between equality and excellence7 is degenerating into open warfare. Experts attribute much of the intensifying conflict to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 20o1,8 which sets performance standards for public school students between grades 3 and 12 and requires public schools to meet these standards by making consistent progress

toward proficiency as measured by man-dated tests, with the ultimate goal of mak-ing all public school students proficient in math and reading by 2014. Schools that fail to make steady progress toward this goal may be required to offer tutoring services to students and to allow parents to transfer their children to other, better-performing schools.9 The act is directed toward shrinking the achievement gap be-tween wealthy and nonwealthy students and between minority and nonminority students by raising the performance of all students to threshold levels in the core subjects of reading and mathematics.10

This federal pressure on public schools may be helping the lowest-performing students.11 But it is also having complex, largely disturbing effects on gifted stu-dents, who typically perform at levels well above those required by standard-ized tests. The federal government does not require public schools to offer pro-grams for gifted children, nor does the NCLB Act penalize schools when the test scores of their high-performing students do not progress from year to year. On the other hand, the act creates powerful incentives for schools to focus on raising the test scores of their lowest-performing students, and some schools are doing this by cutting elective programs for gifted children and spending the money from these programs on the effort to comply with NCLB Act requirements.12 “At the same time, neighborhood public schools are seeking to hang on to their gifted stu-dents—even if that means not referring such students to off-site gifted programs that would offer them a more challeng-ing education—because gifted students’ test scores boost the overall performance of their schools.”13 The competition for these students’ scores is so intense that several states have decided to credit the

test scores of gifted students not to the schools in which they are actually en-rolled but to their neighborhood schools, a practice some hope will stop “subtle sabotage” by schools that refuse to refer their gifted students to special programs for which they are eligible in order to keep their higher test scores at less chal-lenging neighborhood schools.14 In short, financial pressures on schools created by the NCLB Act are reducing or ending gifted programs in some school systems while discouraging neighborhood public schools from referring gifted students to programs specifically designed to benefit them.15

As The Wall Street Journal noted in a recent story, the NCLB-inspired empha-sis on boosting low performance over encouraging high performance “may cre-ate a more knowledgeable U.S. citizenry overall . . . . But reducing programs for the best students could also make it harder to replenish-and diversify-the country’s ranks of top intellectuals and scientists:”16

Furthermore, reported the Journal

The effects may be felt most by gifted low-income minority pupils whose parents don’t have the option of shift-ing them to private schools or provid-ing outside enrichment to compensate for cutbacks. Moreover, the priority changes wrought by the law are coming just as districts had been making prog-ress in identifying and nurturing brainy minority students, who’ve long been underrepresented in such programs.17

Thus, gifted students from disadvan-taged backgrounds are most harmed by the increased focus on raising the test per-formance of all disadvantaged students.

Debate over the proper identification and placement of gifted children in pub-

Giftedness, Disadvantage, and LawBy Cynthia V. Ward

Intellect in America is presented as a kind of excellence, as a claim to distinction, as a challenge to egalitarianism, as a quality which almost certainly deprivesa man or woman of the common touch. Richard Hofstadterl


lic schools is not new. But the pressure put on public schools by the NCLB Act has brought advocates and opponents of gifted education into starker conflict. This presents a chance to reexamine the foundational premises of the argument in closer view and to analyze the potential role of law in resolving it.

In the first part of this article I consider the premises of the equality versus excel-lence debate as it involves the issue of gifted children and their treatment in the public schools. I conclude that although no innate conflict exists between the goals of achieving educational equality and promoting individual academic ex-cellence, these two goals engage a core political conflict that has long thwarted efforts to provide adequate public funding for gifted education. In the second part I recount the history of federal support for gifted children from disadvantaged back-grounds, concluding that the political sys-tem fails to promote the development of such children and that this fact is unlikely to change. In the third section I discuss the other legal route to delivering needed services to gifted and disadvantaged kids: the creation and funding of nonprofit or-ganizations. I argue that the philosophy behind the nonprofit sector in the United States—that nonprofits exist, in large part, to increase liberty, encourage diver-sity, and promote innovative solutions to important social problems—makes de-vising and funding nonprofit ventures a more promising way to benefit gifted and disadvantaged children than government funding. However, the diversity and diffu-sion of the nonprofit sector present a for-midable obstacle to the kind of coherent and organized mandate that would most effectively help gifted children. I identify five core goals of such a mandate and describe one program that, in conjunc-tion with the public school system, seems designed to implement all five.

Giftedness: A Conflict Between Equality and Excellence

The Dilemma of Equality in Education

As many commentators have noted, the issue of education for the gifted highlights a tension between two deeply rooted American values: equality and excellence.18 We seem quite willing to

acknowledge individual gifts in nonaca-demic areas such as music, art, and athlet-ics, but when it comes to acknowledging, celebrating, or publicly advancing the greater intellectual potential of some chil-dren, we find ourselves caught between the equality rock (“all men are created equal”) and the individualist hard place (“be all that you can be”).19 Thus, we are tempted to deny that there is such a thing as academic giftedness20 or to award gift-edness, by decree, to all children in equal measure.21 In either case the rationale for educational tracking-the placement of students according to differing academic ability—disappears, as does the rationale for gifted education per se.

The principal benefit of such collec-tive denial is that it helps avoid a face-to-face conflict between equality and excellence. But disturbing consequences also flow from failing to develop the in-tellectual talent of our most gifted stu-dents. Comparative data indicate that top American high school students are not be-ing prepared to do high-level college work and that the academic preparation of these top students in the United States lags far behind that of students from other nations.22 According to the Education Department’s 1993 National Excellence Report, “Compared with top students in other industri-alized countries, American students perform poorly on international tests, are offered a less rigorous cur-riculum, read fewer demanding books, do less homework, and enter the work force or postsecond-ary education less well prepared.’’23 In fact, “international assessments have focused attention on the relatively poor standing of all American students. These tests also show that our top-performing students

are undistinguished at best and poor at worst when compared with top students in other countries.”24

Inherent Conflict Between Equality and Excellence?

It is sometimes necessary to prioritize conflicting values and to throw one’s lim-ited resources behind the more impor-tant. Before doing so, however, one ought to discover whether and to what extent a real conflict exists. Is it true that special programs for gifted children conflict with the goal of equality in education?

First, what is meant by the claim that there is such a conflict? The usual argu-ment is that singling out gifted children and treating their talents as special tar-gets of development creates the danger of elitism.25 Elitism, in turn, is “the belief that certain persons or members of cer-tain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority.”26 By distinguishing and sep-arately educating gifted students we are acknowledging their superiority, and—so


the argument goes—that acknowledg-ment threatens to erode equality.

Notice that this view converts intel-lectual equality into a substantive rather than merely procedural value. It assumes not merely that all children should have equal opportunity to compete for special educational advantages (the procedural vision) but that all children equally merit such advantages because they are sub-stantively equal in intellectual capacity. From this substantive vision of equality proceed the contentions that all children are equally gifted and that no children are distinguishably gifted beyond others.

Furthermore, to make sense of the claim that special programming for gifted children violates the value of equality, we must conclude that the substantive equal-ity posited among all children is equality of intellectual capacity per se, because a more expansive conception of equality—for in-stance, a claim that children have different gifts in different areas but that they all add up to the same amount of giftedness for each child—would offer no basis for op-position to programs for the academically talented on grounds of equality.

For the moment, forget the improb-ability of the claim that nature endows all children with equal intellectual capacity. If one begins from the assumption that this claim of substantive equality is true, then the inequality of children’s performance in school—the fact that some children do better than others academically—be-comes a social and political problem that may well demand a response on grounds of equality. If all children are born with equal intellectual capacity but their per-formance in school varies widely, then something in their environment, either in or outside school, must be creating this inequality. Inequality of performance is created by society, not by nature. The problem for schools, perhaps especially for public schools, becomes how to deal with this socially created inequality. Should they encourage and maintain it by creating special programs for already advantaged children deemed gifted, or should they refuse to perpetuate socially created inequality in public school and, presumably, discourage special education for the best-performing children?

The flowering of this substantive vision of equality was very visible in the debate over tracking in the 1980s and 1990s. In that decade many public school systems ended the practice of tracking—of assign-

ing students to separate academic tracks depending on their prior performance in school—in favor of an all-in-one approach in which students of all ability levels are educated together.27 The rationale for detracking relied heavily on the value of equality. Opponents of tracking took note of the fact that a disproportionate percent-age of children in gifted programs and on the college track in high school come from upper-income, highly educated, Caucasian or Asian backgrounds.28 They used these facts to argue that it is the social inequality into which children are born that deter-mines differences in academic performance and that academic tracking perpetuates, or even worsens, this inequality by placing already privileged students into positions from which they have the greatest chance of future success (e.g., by going to good colleges) while convincing other, equally deserving students that they are “dumb” and cannot learn.29

But here one might argue that the belief that all children are born with the same level of intellectual capacity is just not plausible. Suppose we reintroduce the other side of the nature–nurture issue: the claim that giftedness has a large inborn, innate component. In fact, the available evidence supports this conclusion.30 Does this change either the direction or the importance of the equality value in education?

Surely it must. If we begin from the assumption that a significant reason for different academic performance is in-nate differences in intellectual ability, then a concern for equality could militate strongly in favor of special education for gifted children. In this view, gifted chil-dren have unique needs that arise from their innate differences. Like those of disabled children, for whom we freely provide special accommodations in education, gifted children’s differences should be accommodated in the form of special training that meets their special circumstances.31 Treating gifted children equally means meeting their needs to the same degree to which we meet the needs of other children; indeed, the argument might go, we must strive to meet these special needs in order to achieve educa-tional equality.32

This vision of equality lacks neither moral consent nor imperatives to action. Indeed, it has inspired testing experts to devise and implement new methods for identifying gifted children from disadvan-

taged backgrounds and bringing them into available gifted programs, on the rationale that doing so is necessary in order to real-ize the goals of procedural equality, equal access to gifted programs by all children, and substantive equality in the revised sense just described: equal treatment of and respect for the special needs of every child.33 Notice that this view of equality is not at all in conflict with intellectual excellence. If the goal is to challenge each child to the same degree or to realize each child’s potential to the same degree, then equality may in fact demand the promo-tion of excellence.

But if this is true, then what legitimate basis remains for opposing gifted educa-tion in the public schools?

In their answer to that question, the opponents of gifted education too often plunge from the rationally defensible into the morally disturbing. At its base, the argument they make against recognizing giftedness is grounded not in equality but in its opposite—in radical inequality.

Consider this conclusion more closely. On one hand, opponents of ability-based tracking argue that all children are equally gifted in intellectual capacity or, alternatively, that no children have intellectual gifts that surpass those of others. This substantive equality claim is the basis for arguments against special programs for the gifted. But this claim is seldom expressed in the literature, per-haps because it is so implausible on its face. That is, like advocates, opponents acknowledge a substantial biological component to giftedness. Therefore, the argument against ability tracking must find another rationale, and it has. However, that rationale is grounded in exactly the opposite assumption: that gifted children are different (for what-ever reason) and that their differences should be offered up to their less gifted classmates to further the collective good. Thus, opponents of special tracking for gifted children express the belief that because nongifted students sometimes feel less valued when their gifted peers are educated separately and because the presence of gifted students in the classroom may improve the educational experience for nongifted students, “the harm that gifted education does to the non-gifted far outweighs any value it may have for the gifted child.”34

This view, that giftedness should be pressed into the service of the collec-


tive good, has found new and pernicious expression in the NCLB Act. In a recent Wall Street Journal article detailing the ef-fects of the act on gifted children, Daniel Golden reported that because their rat-ings under the NCLB Act depend on con-sistently rising test scores, neighborhood public schools are fighting to keep their top-scoring students from transferring to special programs for the gifted.35 For ex-ample, when a regional program for gifted students first opened 20 years ago in Youngstown, Ohio, neighborhood schools were eager to refer their gifted students to the program: “There was a real pride in having someone from your building selected for the program:”36 However,

with the advent of high-stakes test-ing, that enthusiasm was replaced by what [one expert] calls “subtle sabotage.” One principal, Kathleen Good of Youngstown’s Mary Haddow Elementary, decided not to refer any gifted children, contending her school met their needs with its own gifted program. When the district asked six children from Mary Haddow to attend the city’s gifted programs in 2000, Mrs. Good protested so strongly that the invitations were withdrawn. “It wasn’t fair to pull out your top group and place them somewhere else.”Mrs. Good says. “You’re creating artificially high scores in some [the schools with gifted pro-grams’] buildings:”37

In this view the fair approach is to hold gifted and talented kids in neighborhood schools in order to keep their higher test scores at those schools, despite the avail-ability of off-site gifted programs that would welcome them and would best fit their needs.38

A second dimension to this rationale is revealed in the case of Principal Beverly Schumann of Youngstown’s Harding Elementary School. Attempting to stop some of the school’s top students from leaving the school for gifted programs elsewhere, Schumann “pleaded with the mother of Heidi Wingler, a gifted third grader, to keep her at Harding for the fourth grade.”39 Consider the mother’s account of that conversation. “’She told me she was encouraging the gifted stu-dents who were leaving to stay,” Elizabeth Wingler says. “Her rationale was that she needed the gifted kids to pull the other kids up. But it seemed to me she was really

more worried about the test scores.”40

In this view it is justifiable to deny tal-ented kids access to gifted programs in or-der to keep their high test scores at their neighborhood schools; such children also maybe denied a challenging education if their presence in general classrooms would improve the educational experience of the other children.41 This approach is not one of equality but the opposite of equality: the belief that the special talents of some children maybe used for the ends of ei-ther nongifted children or their teachers and administrators, whose continuance depends on rising test scores.

Thus, the argument against special edu-cation for the gifted is grounded in two flatly contradictory rationales: that all children are equal in intellectual ability, and therefore singling out some for gifted programs makes no sense, and that gifted children are more talented than others and that their higher level of ability rel-egates them to a lower status than others in that their special talents may justifiably be pressed into the general service of their schools or their nongifted classmates. The first argument is extremely implausible; the second is morally untenable.

Under the only surviving vision of educa-tional equality, then, equality and excellence should work in tandem, and special pro-grams for the gifted should be supported. This seems to be the premise underlying the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act,42 under which

the term “gifted and talented students” means children and youth who give evi-dence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, ar-tistic, or leadership capacity, or in spe-cific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities.43

The Javits Act is premised on the idea that gifted students, like all other stu-dents, should receive the services they need to develop to their full potential.44

In this view there is no conflict between acknowledging equality and developing excellence; instead, equality requires do-ing so. And, once again, the need to do so may be most urgent when the gifted stu-dents come from disadvantaged socioeco-nomic backgrounds, where race, poverty; or other socially grounded obstacles may prevent them from reaching their full po-

tential in the absence of publicly funded gifted programs.45

The argument thus far suggests two things: that no inherent conflict exists be-tween the goals of equality and excellence, and that the apparent debate over these two values therefore must be grounded in a different kind of conflict. I think both conclusions are right, and if they are then a new question immediately presents itself: In the context of gifted education, what is the debate between equality and excellence really about?

I suggest that a value for equality–in its pro–excellence dress-grounds one side of the argument, and for the reasons de-tailed earlier. In a view often adopted by advocates for special gifted programs and echoed in the Javits Act, the goal of pub-lic education is to develop the individual potential of each student. Thus, provid-ing special educational programming for gifted students is a matter of treating them equally, of according them equal respect to other students whose special needs, we have decided, warrant substantial public expenditures.46 Proponents of public edu-cation for the gifted make coherent use of the value of equality.

But the other side of the argument, which opposes the use of public money to fund special programs for gifted chil-dren, has nothing to do with equality at all. The best argument here does not rest on any conception of the proper relation-ship between education and equality. Instead, it rests on a particular account of the proper relationship between educa-tion and democracy. The idea is this: The fundamental goal of public education is not to guarantee equality but to ensure that all students receive threshold levels of training in certain core skills that will prepare them to be good and participat-ing citizens. For example, in this view special educational programming for dis-abled students–which may be necessary in order to impart the threshold levels of necessary skills–may well be required, whereas such programs for the gifted, who may already possess the requisite levels of such skills upon entering school and are much more likely to acquire them in the general classroom than are disabled stu-dents, may well not be required. In short, public education is about ensuring that all children acquire the essential skills needed for good citizenship. We might wish and hope that gifted children be given the means to maximize their special talents,


but until we have achieved the goal of bringing all children up to the requisite threshold level of skills, public schools bear no obligation to establish gifted pro-grams. Again, equality is relevant to this argument only in a very basic, threshold sense. Whatever the differences between children, from wherever they come, and however long they persist, the proper goal of education is to prepare all children for democratic citizenship. Why? Because democracy functions best when the vot-ing citizenry is well informed, and being well informed entails the acquisition of certain basic skills and information about one’s society and about the world. From the standpoint of democracy, that neces-sary information and those requisite skills would make up the content of the public school curriculum.

But if this recasting of the debate over gifted education helps us account for the intense opposition of some and the pas-sionate advocacy of others to special pro-grams for gifted children,47 then we should immediately recognize that the debate does not involve an inherent conflict be-tween bedrock values but is instead rooted in a political conflict over values that, though not logically opposed, are forced into battle in the wake of intervening re-alities such as the scarcity of educational resources, the limited government role in education, the very great range of quality in the public schools, the self-interest of the powerful and well-organized educa-tional establishment, and the low status of education and intellectual development in American culture. In short, the debate is a political one, and this conclusion should transform the discussion entirely.

Political Conflict

Why transform? Because when the con-troversy over educating the gifted is seen not as a disembodied conflict between equality and excellence but instead as a political debate about the primary goal of public education, the realistic options for gifted education become much dearer.

The history of government support for gifted education in the United States sets the stage for this conclusion. That history reflects profound ambivalence toward educating gifted children. In 1931 the federal Education Department cre-ated the Section on Exceptional Children and Youth, the federal government’s first program for the gifted.48 Although public

support for gifted education waned in ensuing years, support rose again in the 1950s when education of the gifted was seen by some as a matter of national de-fense: “Since gifted students had the abil-ity to make significant contributions to the Nation’s welfare, especially in the essential areas of science and technology, it was vital to develop programs to assist them in achieving their full potential.”49 Then, under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), federal support for gifted students waned under pressure to fund programs for better edu-cation of disadvantaged children.50

Advocates of gifted children persisted, and in 1970 President Nixon signed the Gifted and Talented Children’s Education Assistance Act. In 1974 Congress passed amendments to the ESEA that expanded the federal role in gifted education and au-thorized a maximum of $12.5 million per year-about $1 for each gifted student-to gifted programs, and in 1978,via the Gifted and Talented Children’s Education Act, Congress provided for financial assistance to states for the purpose of planning and developing programs for gifted students.51 Three years later that act was repealed by President Reagan in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which also dosed the Office of Gifted and Talented and greatly reduced federal involvement with and funding for gifted education.52 In the late 1980s federal support for the gifted was re-born in the form of the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Act, which was most recently reauthorized by Congress as part of the NCLB Act of 2001.53 Although it did reinstate federal gifted programs that had been discontinued in the early 1980s, the Javits Act has been criticized for offer-ing very low levels of financial support for the gifted and for failing to mandate state programs for the gifted.54

In short, federal support for the gifted has been intermittent at best, and even at its height it has offered very limited incentives, financial or legal, for states to prioritize gifted education.55 In compari-son, consider that the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) “guarantees all children between the ages of three and twenty-one with specifically identified disabilities a free appropriate public education’ in the least restrictive environment in conformance with an Individualized Education Program;”56

and that federal and state funding of IDEA dwarfs funding for the Javits Act.57

In the wake of the NCLB Act of 2001, the Javits Act offers gifted children and their advocates no defense against states and localities that are defunding their gifted programs.58

Consider this history in the context of educational goals. If the primary goal of public education is to develop each student to his or her full potential, then the up-and-down history of government support for gifted students and the dra-matic contrast between that history and the history of the IDEA (and, before it, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) make no sense at all. If individual potential is the gauge, then support for children with special education-related needs should be distributed evenly, re-gardless of what those needs happen to be. But, considered with another goal in mind, the history becomes instantly intelligible. If the fundamental goal of public education is to train all students to a threshold level of skill in preparation for productive citizenship, then it makes sense for schools, and the government, to focus public education on bringing those at the bottom up to a minimum level of proficiency rather than on raising those already at or above that level to heights unreachable by most children.

In fact, in the context of this “threshold theory” of education, the government’s low level of support for gifted education, as well as the emphasis in the NCLB Act on raising everyone to proficiency rather than on developing each student to his or her full potential, is not only compre-hensible but also rationally defensible. It makes sense in a democracy for the government to use public education to help create an informed and productive citizenry. Furthermore, it makes sense in this context for the government to priori-tize that goal both legally and financially by saying, in effect, “Until every child has achieved a threshold level of proficiency, the goal of achieving this threshold shall take priority over other educational goals, such as the development of all children to their individual potential.”58 This has been the animating force of federal educational programs for decades; it is the animating force behind the NCLB Act of 2001; and, it will continue to drive federal educational policy in the foreseeable future. Federal and state support for the gifted will con-tinue to be sporadic, poorly funded, and vulnerable to annihilation by the argu-ment from democracy.


I am certainly not saying that advocates for the gifted should simply give up, that the central role of education in maximiz-ing individual potential should be ignored, or that government money and legal pro-tections should be allowed to disappear completely from the debate over gifted education. However, the argument from democracy does suggest a change of em-phasis on the part of those who promote gifted education.59

Funding Gifted Education Through Nonprofit Enterprise

One way to secure government fund-ing for a project is to ask the government directly, in which case one must lobby, persuade government actors that one’s project is more worthy than others, and suffer periodic battering by the winds of political change. Advocates for gifted education have fought this direct funding battle for decades, with limited success.

Fortunately, there is another way. The United States also houses a thriving non-profit, or independent, sector, compris-ing more than a million organizations. These organizations receive income tax exemptions and other federal and state benefits, and contributors to them may deduct contributions from their indi-vidual income tax. American taxpayers happily offer these subsidies in exchange for the diversity, innovation, and op-portunity to pursue individual visions of freedom offered by the nonprofit sector. In America’s Voluntary Spirit John W. Gardner wrote,

Perhaps the most striking feature of the [independent] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its re-sulting pluralism. Within the bounds of the law, all kinds of people can pursue any idea or program they wish. Unlike government, an independent sector group need not ascertain that its idea or philosophy is supported by some large constituency, and unlike the business sector, they do not need to pursue only those ideas which will be profitable.60

Gardner points out that “government bureaucracies are simply not constructed to permit the emergence of countless new ideas, and even less suited to the winnow-ing out of bad ideas.” On the other hand,

“institutions of the nonprofit sector are in a position to serve as the guardians of intellectual and artistic freedom. Both the commercial and political marketplaces are subject to leveling forces that may threaten standards of excellence. In the nonprofit sector, the fiercest champions of excellence may have their say.”61

Although private schools constitute a major segment of the nonprofit sector in the United States,62 schools specifically de-signed to serve gifted students are rare, as are charities whose sole or chief function is to provide services to gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds.63 This paucity of nonprofit services is particu-larly striking in light of the fact that the independent sector seems to offer an ex-cellent environment, free of content-based government interference, for the creation of and experimentation with opportuni-ties to help gifted children who need it. The creation of nonprofit enterprises offers a way to get government support (through entity-based and contributor tax exemptions) for gifted children with-out doing political battle with competing visions of education, mainstream cultural indifference toward education, or hostility toward the gifted.

In the face of these evident advantages, why do advocates for the gifted place so much emphasis on winning direct govern-ment funding for their cause? The reasons are undoubtedly complex, and here I offer a speculation that, even if true, can be only a partial account. To the extent that advo-cates for the gifted choose the nonprofit route, they benefit from the independent sector’s toleration of freedom and di-versity, but they may also suffer from its lack of coherence and central planning. Statutes such as the Javits Act not only provide specific services such as funding research into giftedness, but also offer the opportunity to craft, in the highly visible setting of federal legislation, a coherent vi-sion of giftedness and the services needed to develop it.64 In the world of nonprofits, where freedom and diversity are the order of the day, unity of vision may be much more difficult to achieve.

It is not impossible, however. Indeed, the latest research on gifted education suggests that there are common core elements to successful gifted programs. The research indicates that maximizing the abilities of gifted children, particularly gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds, requires at least five overlapping endeavors.

First, it requires imaginative methods of identifying giftedness in children who lack many of the socioeconomic advan-tages enjoyed by the wealthier Caucasian youngsters who have traditionally domi-nated gifted programs. Such methods are exemplified both in new forms of testing for giftedness65 and in the transcendence of standardized testing in favor of other, more contextualized methods of identi-fication.66

Second, gifted children, particularly those who are profoundly gifted, have different cognitive and emotional styles from other children. Thus, helping them perform to their highest potential may involve counseling to foster a healthy self-concept or, in the case of gifted stu-dents from disadvantaged backgrounds, to help such students deal with pressure from their home cultures not to do well in school.67

Third, to be challenged intellectually gifted children need appropriate curricula and the opportunity to learn in an envi-ronment that is supportive of their gifts, preferably an environment in which they can interact frequently with other gifted children.

Fourth, gifted children from disadvan-taged backgrounds often need financial help not only to pay tuition but also for such basics as transportation to and from their special classrooms, books and other study materials, and tutoring in the English language. A fully realized program for gifted education would offer the funds to pay for such services.

Finally, helping gifted children from any background involves educating their parents and involving them in the process of developing their child’s talent. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that superior academic performance by children is strongly associated with high parental expectations, flexibility in parenting, and parental support for the child’s efforts.68

These five requirements—nonbiased identification, innovative curricula de-livered in a stimulating and encourag-ing environment, individual counseling, financial assistance for school-related purposes, and parental involvement—can form the basis for a coherent and unified program to help gifted and disadvantaged students, whether that program originates in government or in the nonprofit sector.

Indeed, most of these elements can be found in at least one program that is al-ready in place. The Open Gate program,


in San Diego, California, is funded and managed by the Human Development Foundation (HDF), a private nonprofit organization. In conjunction with the San Diego public school system, the Open Gate program identifies and offers educational resources to highly gifted elementary school students from low-income families. According to HDF’s own documentation, “if not supported by Open Gate-like programs, these children are likely to be among the most qualified people who do not go to col-lege, and are statistically likely to end up in the tragedy of teenage gang activity.”69 Children are identified for the program in the 2nd grade. Once admitted to the program the children are placed in separate daily classrooms for the gifted, run by the San Diego public school sys-tem, and offered a variety of services by Open Gate. Before this program was established most students in the city’s gifted seminars came from wealthy or middle-income backgrounds; the Open

Gate program “addresses the systemic causes of disadvantaged communities, by empowering individual children at the developmental stage when their leadership potential can be fostered toward the work force and productive self-reliant futures.”70 Not only are gifted and disadvantaged students offered language tutoring and money to cover transportation, books and supplies, and other expenses, but a companion program, Open Gate Parents’ Place, was recently established “to directly in-volve parents in their child’s education by providing English language instruc-tion for parents at their child’s level of learning . . . The program is designed to provide parents with a basic foundation in English literacy skills and develop strong skills to help their children with their homework!”71 The companion program also involves the introduction of parenting skills, especially those rel-evant to homework and study habits.72

Conclusion: A Systemic Approach Using Nonprofit

Open Gate is only one example of a sys-temic approach to helping gifted children. But it does suggest that such an approach is possible via the nonprofit sector, and by its existence and ambition it elevates the possibility of a unified, coherent vision of helping gifted children—particularly those who are least able to help themselves—to realize their individual potential. In an educational era in which government support for the gifted is threatened by de-funding and by the pathological responses of public schools under pressure from standardized testing, such endeavors are particularly welcome.

This article was reprinted with the per-mission of the Journal of Education Finance (Summer, 2005).


References

1. “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” (1970), quoted in U.S. Department of Education, National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent (Washington, DC: Author, 1993) (herein-after, National Excellence), Part I, p. 5.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., Part III, p. 3.

7. See, e.g., C. A. Tomlinson, “Proficiency Is Not Enough,” Education Week Commentary, November 6, 2002, 36 (“One of the reasons it is so devilishly difficult to balance equity and excel-lence in our schools is that, despite the political rhetoric to the contrary, we simply don’t provide adequate economic support to nurture both goals. We have a substantial history in education, in fact, of supporting one to the detriment of the other.”).

8. No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), 20 U.S.C. Sec. 6301 et seq.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. See D. Golden, “Initiative to Leave No Child Behind Leaves Out Gifted,” Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2003, 1.

12. Ibid. (“To abide by the law, schools are shifting resources away from programs that help their most gifted students. “Because all the incen-tives in No Child Left Behind are to focus on the bottom or the middle,” says Stanford University education professor Michael Kirst, “reallocating resources there makes sense if you want to stay out of trouble.”)

13. D. Golden, “In Era of Scores, Schools Fight over Gifted Kids,” Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2004, 1.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Golden, “Initiative,” 1.

17. Ibid.

18. Where “excellence” is equated with intellect, in the words of R. Hoftstadter in National Excellence. See P. S. Bittick, “Equality and Excellence: Equal Education Opportunity for Gifted and Talented Children,” 36 S. Texas L. Rev. u9, 144 (1995) (“Traditionally, we have stressed equity over ex-cellence in education. Equity has typically meant focusing on a disabled or minority population, whereas excellence has meant focusing on the highly-abled. Many perceive that education can either strive for quality or equality, but not both.” Bittick goes on to argue that this view “creates a false dichotomy of policy objectives between equity and excellence”); L. Ketterman, “Does the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Exclude Gifted and Talented Children with Emotional Disabilities?” 32 St. Mary’s Law Journal 913, 936 (2001) (“Unfortunately, the achievements of gifted students [in the United States] have de-clined over the past three decades,” and Ketterman attributes the decline in part to “the pitting of

equity against excellence rather than promoting both equity and excellence, anti-intellectualism, the ‘dumbing-down’ of the curriculum, equating aptitude and achievement testing with elitism, the attraction to fads by schools, and the insistence of schools to teach all students from the same cur-riculum at the same level?” [citations omitted]). See also E. Winner, Gifted Children (New York: Basic Books, 1996): 234–235 (“An egalitarian, anti-elitist ideology has become dominant in our culture, even though our culture is in reality far from truly egalitarian . . . This egalitarian ideology buttresses our profound ambivalence about intel-lectual excellence”).

19. See Winner, Gifted Children, 234–235 (“We do not mind if someone is a star in music, art, athletics, or chess, because it is not considered shameful to lack skills in these domains. But when some children are classified as academic stars, we do mind, because such a classification implies the existence of children who are not as strong academically.” [citation omitted]); C. J. Russo, “Unequal Educational Opportunities for Gifted Students: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul?” 29 Fordham Urban Law. 1. 727, 730–731; National Excellence.

20. See Winner, Gifted Children, 234 (quoting Mayor Kenneth Reeves of Cambridge, MA, as that city dismantled its gifted programs: “I don’t agree with the concept of more and less gifted. I think that all students can and will learn. We don’t want to run a separate system for those who are perceived to be brighter.”) and 143 (“Psychologists have their own myth: that giftedness is entirely a product of the environment. They argue that the right kind of intensive training, begun at an early age, is sufficient to account for even the very highest levels of giftedness-the levels attained by child prodigies, savants, or adult creators.” After sifting through the evidence on this question, Winner concludes that “the psychologist’s myth of adult-made prodigies does not hold up. Hard work is not sufficient, and precocious children are not mere drudges!” Biology is not the whole story, either, but “there is considerable evidence for a strong, inborn, brain-based component to giftedness.”)

21. Ibid., 234 (“Often the argument against special education for the gifted is that all children are gifted. This view has developed as definitions of intelligence have broadened beyond IQ and children’s gifts in areas not measured by IQ tests have been recognized. Teachers and administra-tors argue that all children have strengths and that schools should nurture the strengths in each child.” Winner makes the obvious response, that “the fact that all children have relative strengths does not mean that all are equally gifted”).

22. See National Excellence.

23. National Excellence Executive Summary, 3. More recent test data continue to show American stu-dents lagging behind those of most industrialized nations in both reading and mathematics. For example, in 2003 the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tested 15-year-olds from the United States and other countries on applied math skills. Among 29 industrialized na-tions, the American students tied for first place. Younger U.S. students are also behind those of other nations in math. Also in 2003, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study ranked American 4th graders 12th out of 25

countries in math and 6th in science. A PISA test conducted in 2000 ranked American students 5th in reading skills, behind most other indus-trialized nations. See Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development “Messages from PISA 2000” (Paris: Author, 2004), 5.

24. National Excellence, Part I, p. 2.

25. See Russo, 730; Winner, 2-3.

26. American Heritage Dictionary, http://www.YourDictionary.com.

27. See M. T. Hallinan, “The Detracking Movement,” (Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution, 2004), http://www.educationnextLorgI2oo44/72.html (discuss-ing the “backlash against tracking that began in the 198os. Critics argued that tracking, especially in practice, created greater learning opportuni-ties for high-performing students at the expense of their lower-performing peers” Hallinan notes that “at the height of the detracking movement, organizations including the National Governors Association, the National Education Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the California Department of Education came down in favor of detracking”).

28. See Hallinan (noting that the detracking move-ment picked up considerable momentum with the 1985 publication of Jeannie Oakes’s deeply influential Keeping Track-How Schools Structure Inequality . . . Overall, Oakes characterized track-ing as an elitist practice that perpetuated the sta-tus quo by giving students from privileged families greater access to elite colleges and high-income careers.”). See also Winner, 241 (“Ability grouping has also been accused of being racist and clas-sist, since gifted programs in the United States, for example, are overrepresented by Asians, fol-lowed by whites, and underrepresented by blacks and Hispanics. A study by the U.S. Department of Education conducted in 1991 found that programs for gifted students had five times more students from families in the top socioeconomic quarter of the population than students from the lowest quarter.”).

29. Winner, 240 (“When gifted education means grouping children by ability, those opposed to gifted education argue that children left in the low track feel dumb . . . The low expectations that teachers have for these students, and that these students adopt as a result of being in the low group, become self-fulfilling prophecies!”).

30. Ibid., 152–153 (“There is considerable evidence for a strong inborn, brain-based component to giftedness”); Ibid., 153–169 (summarizing and evaluating such evidence.).

31. See Bittick, 139 (“Comparing gifted and talented students to learning or physically disabled stu-dents is appropriate. The social, emotional, and educational problems of gifted children can be as complicated as those who are physically or learn-ing disabled. Both are populations of exceptional students . . . The special educational needs for those student groups deviate from the normal pedagogical instruction appropriate for most other students”).

32. Ibid.

33. See J. H. Borland and L. Wright, “Identifying Young, Potentially Gifted, Economically Disadvantaged Students,” Gifted Child Quarterly 38 (1994): 164, 165–168 (describing process of


devising and implementing complex identifica-tion procedure for purposes of selecting gifted students at public school in central Harlem, New York City). See also National Excellence, Executive Summary (“The United States is squandering one of its most precious resources—the gifts, talents, and high interests of [its most gifted] students . . . This problem is especially severe among economically disadvantaged and minority students, who have access to fewer advanced educational opportuni-ties and whose talents often go unnoticed.”).

34. Winner, 241; see also 24o-241. Winner notes that opponents also argue that ability tracking harms gifted students by encouraging elitism on their part and that teaching other children can be of benefit to gifted children. Why is such an arrangement of more benefit to gifted children than the additional knowledge they would gain on a faster academic track? The usual answer is that whatever benefit separate tracking has is trumped by the harm it inflicts on nongifted children—that is, the collective good argument.

35. Studies indicate that such programs offer the best and most intellectually challenging means of edu-cating gifted children. See J. Van Tassel-Baska, Excellence in Educating Gifted and Talented Learners, 3rd ed. (Denver: Love, 1998): 217 (“Gifted children thrive and learn best in special classes where they are together on a daily basis for all or most of the school day . . . Special classes are also more cost-effective . . . Van Tassel-Baska Willis, and Meyers (1989) conducted a study of full-time, self-contained classes for gifted students and found very positive effects . . . Feldhusen . . . argued that such classes are the best arrangement for highly gifted students, especially because they profit so much from working with other gifted students”).

36. Golden, “In Era of Scores,” 1 (quoting Carol Baird, the gifted education supervisor in Youngstown).

37. Ibid. Golden notes that some educators argue that keeping talented children out of gifted pro-grams is better for the children; for example, one Youngstown principal advises parents of gifted but shy children not to send them to a gifted program, on the theory that such children are better off in a small “family school” environment. However, “gifted-education specialists respond that children who seem withdrawn in a regular classroom often blossom among their intellectual peers.” See also Van Tassel-Baska, 217.

38. As Golden reports in “In Era of Scores, Ohio and several other states have adopted policies under which gifted students’ test scores are at-tributed to their neighborhood schools, whether or not they actually attend those schools. Some gifted-education advocates say they supported the change because they felt it was the only way to ensure that neighborhood schools would send their best students to gifted programs. Without the change, “local administrators and boards of education would begin to dismantle programs for gifted education,” said one expert.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Again, some argue that education in the general classroom is in the best interests of gifted children (see Winner). But these arguments have the fla-vor of post hoc rationalizations, especially given the evidence that gifted children thrive most

in special classes “where they are together on a daily basis for all or most of the school day” (Van Tassel-Baska, 217) and the evidence of substantial teacher resistance to recognizing and developing the talents of gifted students in the general class-room (Ibid., 214: “Gross (1993) documented well the precocity of gifted and talented children. All of the children she studied were achieving and functioning intellectually at levels far beyond what would be normative for their chronological ages. Yet schools, and teachers in particular, were often reluctant to acknowledge the precocity or to make any modifications in the curriculum.”).

42. Public Law l00-297, Apr. 28, 1988; current ver-sion codified as part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

43. NCLB 2001, Title V, Part D, Subpart 6.

44. See also Bittick, 139; Russo, 758 (“It is time to redress the ongoing inequity of failing to provide equal educational opportunities for gifted chil-dren”).

45. See Russo, 731; Winner, 252–253 (“The argument that gifted programs discriminate because certain minority groups are underrepresented in these programs can be countered by the argument that such programs are actually more important for the disadvantaged gifted than for the advantaged gifted . . . [Consider children] from poor families in rural or inner-city schools. Such schools are our weakest, and thus the ones least likely to have challenging after-school activities. In addition, children who attend these schools are far less likely than affluent ones to have educated parents with the time and resources to provide the en-richment that schools do not?”). See also Golden, “In Era ofScores,”1 (reporting that in Youngstown, Ohio, “a Rust Belt city battered by a shrinking en-rollment and tax base,” two elementary schools offer separate 4th- through 6th-grade classes for gifted students throughout the district. “Of 44 gifted students in the two elementary buildings” Golden reports, “44% are black and 92% qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.”).

46. See Russo.

47. See Winner, 240 (“The debate [about methods] within the field of gifted education is mild com-pared to the heated controversy between those in favor of any kind of gifted education and those op-posed. Each side fervently believes that it is in the right, and that the other is morally wrong. Each side believes that it cares about the interests of all children, while the other side cares only about the interests of some. The arguments pro and con are not specific to the United States but can be heard in most advanced countries today.”).

48. Russo, 733. This section relies heavily on the very helpful research in Professor Russo’s article.

49. Ibid., 737.

50. Ibid., 737–738 (“Federal resources that would otherwise have been earmarked for programs for the gifted were diverted to other programs under the auspices of the ESEA. The federal government adopted a policy that essentially robbed Peter to pay Paul by providing resources for one group of deserving students at the expense of another.” [citations omitted]).

51. Ibid., 738–740.

52. Ibid., 740–741.

53. NCLB 2000.

54. Ibid. See also Golden, “Initiative:”1 (“One reason gifted-child education is vulnerable to cutbacks is that the U.S. government doesn’t mandate programs for the three million or so students considered to be in the category. The federal contribution is limited to $11.2 million a year for research and state grants.” Golden also reports that “more than half of states require districts to offer gifted-student programs, but few provide enough state aid to cover the costs.”).

55. See Russo, 741 (“Consequently, its good inten-tions aside, the Javits Act can virtually be ignored by states that do not place a priority on programs for gifted children?”).

56. Ibid., 735–736 [citations omitted].

57. For example, in 2003 federal funding of IDEA, including grants to the states, amounted to more than $20 billion; meanwhile, the federal govern-ment gave a mere $11.2 million to fund the Javits Act that year.

58. See Golden, “Initiative,” 1.

59. Or the education of all children. Many experts have complained about the low level of expecta-tions and the low substantive standards that dom-inate American public education. See Winner, 244–245 (“American schools hold comparatively low expectations for their students . . . Not sur-prisingly, American children fare poorly when compared to children in most other developed countries . . . The comparative findings provide an argument not only for challenging our gifted more, but for challenging all of our students more”). Were the goal of maximizing poten-tial to become more central to our educational programs, this might create an incentive to raise general expectations, and the level of instruction offered, to all children.

60. J. W. Gardner, “The Independent Sector” in America’s Voluntary Spirit, ed. B. O’Connell (New York: Foundation Center, 1983): ix.

61. Ibid.

62. See L. M. Salamon, America’s Nonprofit Sector: A Primer, in Nonprofit Organizations: Cases and Materials, 2nd ed., eds. J. Fishman and S. Schwarz (New York: Foundation Press, 2000), 15 (Social service agencies are the single largest group among 501(c) (3) organizations. “The next largest group of nonprofit service agencies are educational and research institutions, including private elementary and secondary schools as well as private universities and colleges, libraries, and research institutes. Close to 38,000 such nonprofit educational institutions exist and they comprise 22 percent of the sector’s institutions.”).

63. See Winner, 268 (naming the Nueva School in California as “one of the few U.S. schools explic-itly designed for academically gifted children”) and 269 (“The Illinois Math and Science Academy is one of a handful of public schools [some resi-dential, some not] that are reserved for the gifted, mostly at the high school level, and mostly focus-ing on math and science”). But this is not to say that there are no organizations with national reach that are designed to help the gifted. In addition to the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, based in Connecticut and funded by the Javits Act, in recent years a growing number of nonprofit charities have arisen to serve the needs


of the gifted. A few prominent examples include the National Gifted Children’s Fund ([email protected]), Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (http://www.sengifted.org), High IQ for Humanity (http://www.hiqh.org), and family foundations such as the Davidson Foundation (http://www.davidsonfoundation.org) and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (http://www.jack-kentcookefoundation.org).

64. Such a vision has occasionally emerged from the federal government’s halting efforts to support gifted education. See, e.g., the Javits Act answer to the definitional question, “What is giftedness?” (NCLB 2001); see also Russo, 739 (“At the outset of the 1970s, the federal government had assumed a much more active role in providing for the edu-cational needs of the gifted. On October 6,1972, Commissioner of Education Sidney Marland submitted his national assessment of programs for the gifted to Congress. Not surprisingly, the Marland Report urged Congress to provide ongo-ing support for the development and maintenance of programs for gifted students”).

65. See Van Tassel-Baska, 20 (naming the nonverbal Ravens Progressive Matrices test as “a test that yields a g score for general intelligence and that is widely used to avoid verbal biases in test con-tent”), 90 (“Tests such as the Raven’s Progressive

Matrices or the performance section of the WISC-R can be used to identify abilities often masked by disabling conditions that limit verbal ability.”), and 98 (describing promising nontradi-tional approaches to the identification of gifted-ness and noting that in “one recent study, the Advanced Raven’s Matrices was found to identify a significantly greater percentage of minority students than did a traditional measure.”). See also Borland and Wright, 164 (authors went to an innercity elementary school in Harlem and used a variety of traditional and nontraditional methods to identify gifted children, some of whom went on to be successful in programs for the gifted).

66. See Borland and Wright.

67. See R. D. Hoge and J. S. Renzulli, “Self Concept and the Gifted Child” (Storrs, CT: National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, 1991); D. Y. Ford, “Support for the Achievement Ideology and Determinants of Underachievement as Perceived by Gifted, Above-Average, and Average Black Students,” Journal for the Education of the Gifted 16 (1993): 280 (“To some Black stu-dents, for example, being an honor student or straight-A student is an indication of racelessness or ‘acting white’. . . In short, some gifted Black students want no part of school, particularly when it is perceived as benefiting Whites rather

than Blacks. Weis (1985) and MacLeod (1987) have suggested that, for some Black students, the-mere act of attending school is evidence of a semi-conscious—or even conscious—rejection of the Black culture.”).

68. See N. M. Robinson, R. A. Weinberg, D. Reddin, S. L. Ramey, and C. T. Ramey, “Family Factors Associated with High Academic Performance Among Former Head Start Children,” Gifted Child Quarterly 42 (Summer 1998), 148 (“Like others who have studied parents of gifted children . . . we find the essential ingredients of parental responsive-ness, time, involvement, and high expectations reappearing in this study.”).

69. “Human Development Foundation” (http://www.sdfoundation.org), description of Open Gate program. According to the Human Development Foundation, Open Gate receives funds from a variety of sources, private and public, individual and institutional, in the San Diego area.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid. Most children and families in the program are second-language students, so heavy emphasis is placed on language training for both students and parents. This emphasis is site-dependent.

72. Ibid.

What the research says about

Perfectionismby ashley minton, Krystal Goree, and susan K. Johnsen


Perfectionism is a common character-istic observed in gifted students (Or-ange, 1997; Pruett, 2004; Siegle & Schul-er, 2000; Speirs Neumeister, 2004a). Its multidimensionality, however, has made it difficult for researchers to succinctly define (Orange, 1997). Most agree that perfectionism can be displayed in several different dimensions, both negative and positive (Dixon, Lapsley, & Hanchon, 2004; LoCicero & Ashby, 2000; Orange, 1997; Parker, 1998; Parker, 2000; Pruett, 2004; Schuler, 2000; Speirs Neumeister, 2004a, 2006). These include: a need for order or organization and approval of others, obsessive-compulsive demands on oneself, anxiety and excessive worry, indecision, and procrastination (Orange, 1997). In an effort to understand per-fectionism more fully, researchers have examined the factors that contribute to perfectionism, as well as the effects it has on gifted students both academically and personally.

This review examined articles pub-lished since 1997 in Gifted Child Today, Gifted Child Quarterly, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, and Roeper Review. Empirical studies pertaining to perfectionism in gifted students were included. These selection criteria yielded 14 articles. Participants included gifted students from middle school (n = 8), high school (n = 2), and college (n = 4).

According to Schuler (2000), perfec-tionism lies along a continuum stretch-ing from nonperfectionism to neurotic perfectionism. Children who are normal perfectionists exhibit characteristics such as striving for excellence, while those who are neurotic perfectionists have extremely high personal standards that tend to be associated with a variety of psychological and physiological disor-ders (Schuler, 2000).

Fortunately, most gifted students experience perfectionism in a healthy form (Schuler, 2000). In a study of gifted sixth graders, Parker (2000) sug-gested that the effect of perfectionism among gifted children was more likely to be healthy achievement than serious maladjustment. Gifted students scored higher on adaptive measures of perfec-tionism on the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised when compared to nongifted peers (LoCicero & Ashby, 2000). This study suggested that the gifted stu-dents were comparatively more perfec-tionistic, but not in maladaptive ways (LoCicero & Ashby, 2000). In another study of gifted middle school students,

the majority of the sample (87.5%) was identified as perfectionists while only 29.5% of those were perfectionists at the neurotic level (Schuler, 2000). Similarly, Parker (2000) reported that only 25% of a sample of gifted sixth graders (n = 400) was identified as dysfunctional perfectionists.

The main theme for a group of gifted middle school students identified as normal perfectionists was order and organization (Schuler, 2000). These stu-dents reported having average personal standards, average doubts about actions, and a lower concern over making mis-takes (Schuler, 2000). Along with these characteristics, Parker (2000) also noted that healthy perfectionists experience some parental criticism.

Not all gifted students experience perfectionism in a healthy or normal form, however. Some face extreme consequences resulting from a neurotic, or dysfunctional, level of perfectionism (Schuler, 2000). In the most extreme cases, neurotic perfectionism has been linked to mental health implications (Dixon et al., 2004). Students identi-fied as dysfunctional perfectionists were not able to cope or adjust as well as their peers, and they reported more obsession-compulsion, depression, and anxiety (Dixon et al., 2004). In a study of gifted sixth graders, the dysfunctional perfectionists scored highest on areas of concern over mistakes, high personal standards, parental expectations and criticism, and doubts about their actions (Parker, 2000).

In addition to being seen as either normal or neurotic, perfectionists may also be labeled by some researchers as either socially prescribed or self-oriented (Speirs Neumeister, 2004a). In a study of gifted college students, socially pre-scribed perfectionists believed that oth-ers had high expectations for them, and they tended to minimize their successes and blamed themselves for failures. Be-cause of overreactions to failures, these perfectionists experienced negative emo-tions such as guilt and anxiety (Speirs Neumeister, 2004a). In contrast, the self-oriented perfectionists, who had high personal standards and motivation, took greater pride in their successes and were able to keep their failures in perspec-tive (Speirs Neumeister, 2004a). Socially prescribed perfectionists described their motives as a fear of failure, whereas self-oriented perfectionists described their motives as a desire to achieve (Speirs Neumeister, 2004b).

Varying forms of perfectionism may be a result of several influences. In a study of intellectually gifted fifth-grade students, researchers reported that the strongest influence was that of parental expectations (Pruett, 2004). Parents who used an authoritarian parenting style, and who were perfectionists them-selves, contributed to their children’s fear of disappointing others and linking their self-worth to achievement (Speirs Neumeister, 2004c). Using an authori-tarian parenting style was also found to be associated with insecure attachment, which in turn was associated with both self-oriented and socially prescribed per-fectionism (Speirs Neumeister & Finch, 2006). When examining the influence of gender, Siegle and Schuler (2000) found that females expressed more concern for organization, and males reported more parental expectations. Another influ-ence researchers have examined is birth order. Parker (1998) found that children who were the youngest in their families were disproportionately nonperfection-ists and least likely to be dysfunctional perfectionists. Children with no siblings were unlikely to be nonperfectionists and likely to be functional perfection-ists. Results from another study indi-cated that first-born adolescents received more parental criticism and had higher parental expectations than their younger siblings (Siegle & Schuler, 2000).

The effects perfectionism has on stu-dents academically and personally vary as well. Socially prescribed perfection-ists avoided situations where they felt they might fail by refusing to participate in class and procrastinating (Speirs Neumeister, 2004b). In contrast, self-oriented perfectionists set mastery goals and sought out challenges for themselves (Speirs Neumeister, 2004b). Tsui (2007) examined the effects of perfectionism on math performance and concluded that as the students’ math anxiety levels in-creased, so did their perfectionism level (Tsui, 2007). Concern over mistakes, doubts about actions, and parental criti-cism all had positive correlations with math anxiety (Tsui, 2007).

Many of the studies concerning perfectionism use scales such as the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised. The reliability and validity of this scale was examined, and the findings supported the use of this measure as a reliable and valid tool for measuring perfectionism (Vandiver & Worrell, 2002). The authors suggest that with the addition of this scale to other measures of perfection-

What the research says about

Perfectionism


ism already being used, additional lon-gitudinal studies need to be conducted for further research on perfectionism among gifted students (Vandiver & Worrell, 2002).

Dixon, F. A., Lapsley, D. K., & Hanchon, T. A. (2004). An empirical typology of perfectionism in gifted adolescents. Gifted Child Quarterly, 48, 95–106.

This study investigated the relation-ship between perfectionism and mental health implications, including indices of psychiatric symptomatology, adjust-ment, self-esteem, and coping. One hundred and forty-two juniors attend-ing a legislative-funded residential academy for science, mathematics, and humanities were administered the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Hopkins Symptom Check-list, the Mastery Coping and Superior Adjustment scales from the Self-Image Questionnaire for Young Adolescents, the Perception of Personal Security and Academic Competence scales from the Self-Esteem Index, and the Coping Inventory. A two-step cluster analysis of subscales from the Multidimen-sional Perfectionism Scale revealed four clusters. These included mixed-adaptive (n = 51), mixed-maladaptive (n = 30), pervasive (n = 30), and self-assured nonperfectionist (n = 39). The study suggested that maladaptive perfection-ism takes two forms: pervasive and mixed-maladaptive. A relationship was found between these two clusters and poor mental health, adjustment, and coping, as compared to the other clus-ter groups. Students in both clusters reported having more obsessive-com-pulsive tendencies, a poorer self-image, a lower sense of personal security, and patterns of dysfunctional coping.

LoCicero, K. A., & Ashby, J. S. (2000). Multidimensional perfectionism in middle school age gifted students: A comparison to peers from the general cohort. Roeper Review, 22, 182–185.

This study examined levels of multi-dimensional perfectionism in a group of gifted students and a group of peers from the general cohort. A multidimensional measure of perfectionism was used which included maladaptive and adaptive com-ponents. The gifted sample included 83 gifted middle school students, as identi-fied by the school district, and the com-

parison group included 112 nonidentified middle school students. Participants were administered the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised. Gifted students scored higher on the adaptive measure of perfectionism and lower on the maladaptive measure. The results suggested that gifted students may be more perfectionistic than the gen-eral cohort students, but not in maladap-tive ways.

Orange, C. (1997). Gifted students and perfectionism. Roeper Review, 20, 39–41.

One hundred and nine students attending an honors conference vol-unteered to complete the Perfection Quiz in order to examine the concept of perfectionism in gifted high school students. Gifted students tended to score high on the quiz with 89% of the partici-pants scoring in the highest categories. Higher scores represented a negative form of perfectionism. Several factors were attributed to perfectionistic behav-ior, including the need for order or or-ganization, need for approval of others, obsessive-compulsive demands on self, anxiety and excessive worry, indecision, and procrastination. Procrastination was determined to be the number one problem among the participants.

Parker, W. D. (1998). Birth-order effects in the academically talented. Gifted Child Quarterly, 42, 29–38.

The effect of birthorder in academically talented students was studied in a sample of 828 academically talented sixth graders participating in a longitudinal study at Johns Hopkins University. Students were given the Standard International Occu-pational Prestige scale to measure family socioeconomic status, the International External Locus of Control Scale, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Mul-tidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Adjective Check List, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the NEO-Five Factor Inventory. Mixed results were obtained regarding perfectionism. A mild rela-tionship was found between birth order and perfectionistic type. Results suggest that the youngest children were dispro-portionately nonperfectionists and least likely to be dysfunctional perfection-ists. Only children were unlikely to be nonperfectionists and disproportionately likely to be functional perfectionists. Parker, W. D. (2000). Healthy perfection-

ism in the gifted. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 11, 173–182.

A series of empirical studies were con-ducted with students at Johns Hopkins University to examine the perfectionis-tic needs among academically talented youth. The Multidimensional Perfection-ism Scale was used to measure perfec-tionism in 820 academically talented sixth graders. The scores of 400 randomly selected students were analyzed using hierarchical cluster analysis. Based on the results, 38% of the sample appeared to be nonperfectionists. These students exhibited characteristics such as low personal standards and low perceived parental standards and organization. The second cluster or 42% of the sample were characterized by concern over mistakes, parental criticism, doubts about actions, and high scores on organization. The third cluster had the most extreme scores on the Multidimensional Perfection-ism Scale. This group comprised 25% of the sample who scored highest on areas such as concern over mistakes, personal standards, parental expectations, paren-tal criticism, and doubts about actions. This cluster appeared to be dysfunctional perfectionists. The author concluded that perfectionism is multidimensional and is more likely to promote healthy achieve-ment than personal or academic malad-justment. The author also stated the need for more long-term research related to the factors that contribute to both types of perfectionism.

Pruett, G. P. (2004). Intellectually gifted students’ perceptions of personal goals and work habits. Gifted Child Today, 27, 54–57.

Schuler’s Goals and Work Habits Survey was given to 46 intellectually gifted fifth-grade students to examine the influences of perfectionism. The survey included six subareas: concern over mistakes, personal standards, pa-rental expectations, parental criticism, doubts and actions, and organization. Of those subareas, the strongest influence was that of parental expectations. The study supported the notion that gifted students exhibit some characteristics of perfectionism, but overall, no negative tendencies at this age.

Schuler, P. A. (2000). Perfectionism and the gifted adolescent. Journal of Sec-ondary Gifted Education, 11, 183–196.


A multiple-case research design was used to examine the connection between perfectionism and gifted adolescents. The Goals and Work Habits Survey was administered to 112 gifted middle school students. The scores were analyzed using cluster analysis, and the results suggested that perfectionism lies on a continuum ranging from nonperfection-ists to neurotic perfectionists. Of the 112 students who took the survey, 87.5% were perfectionists, with 29.5% of this group being perfectionists at the neurotic level. Perfectionists exhibited characteristics of lower concern over mistakes, aver-age personal standards, lower parental expectations, lower parental criticism, and average doubts about actions. The main theme for this group was order and organization, influenced by two factors: support systems in their lives and achieving their “personal best.” The neurotic perfectionists scored the highest in the areas of concern over mistakes, personal standards, perceived parental expectations, perceived paren-tal criticism, and doubts in actions. The main theme for this group was concern over making mistakes, influenced by two factors: perceived expectations and perceived criticisms. Twenty students were then selected to participate in the multiple-case study. Data collected from students included school records, ob-servations, and anecdotal records from peers and educators. Semistructured interviews and detailed explanations of responses to the Goals and Work Habits Survey were conducted with each par-ticipant. Teachers, parents, and students of the 20 students also completed the Empowering Gifted Behavior Scale. The author concluded that perfectionism is multidimensional and pointed out that while most gifted students experience a healthy form of perfectionism, some gifted students experience detrimental consequences as results of a neurotic level of perfectionism.

Siegle, D., & Schuler, P. A. (2000). Per-fectionism differences in gifted middle school students. Roeper Review, 23, 39–44.

Grade level, birth order, and gender differences and their relationships to perfectionism in gifted middle school students were the focus of this study. Schuler’s Goals and Work Habits Survey, which was adapted from the Multidimensional Perfection Scale, was given to 391 middle school students.

Five dependent variables were analyzed including concern over mistakes, orga-nization, personal standards, parental criticism, and parental expectations. The results indicated that females ex-pressed more concern for organization than males, and males reported higher parental expectations than females. When looking at birth order, this study suggested that first-born adolescents received more parental criticism and had higher parental expectations than younger children.

Speirs Neumeister, K. L. (2004a). Inter-preting successes and failures: The influence on perfectionism on per-spective. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 27, 311–335.

This qualitative study examined the differences in the interpretation of successes and failures in gifted college students. The participants included 12 first-year honors program students from a large Southeastern university who had scored high on either socially prescribed or self-oriented perfection-ism, as defined by the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. Data were collect-ed through in-depth, semistructured interviews that included open-ended questions. Findings were constructed using inductive data analysis. The re-sults of this study indicated that social-ly prescribed perfectionists, ones who perceived that others have high expec-tations for them, tended to minimize their successes and blamed themselves for failures. Self-oriented perfection-ists, those who had a tendency to have high standards and motivation to attain perfectionism, made internal attribu-tions for their successes and situation-specific attributions for their failures. The author suggested that both types of perfectionists may need counseling in how to deal with successes and failures and the emotions connected to experi-encing either.

Speirs Neumeister, K. L. (2004b). Under-standing the relationship between per-fectionism and achievement motiva-tion in gifted college students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 48, 219–231. Building on previous results, this

study examined how socially pre-scribed and self-oriented perfectionists perceived achievement motivation. A qualitative interview design was used to gather data from 12 first-year honors program students at a Southeastern uni-

versity. The socially prescribed perfec-tionists (n = 6) described a fear-of-failure motive. This fear of failure led them to avoid situations where their incompe-tence might be revealed. Some of the behaviors they exhibited were refusing to participate in classes where they did not feel sure of themselves, evaluating their performance based on comparisons to their peers, and procrastinating. In contrast, the self-oriented perfectionists (n = 6) described behaviors influenced by their motive to achieve. These students set mastery goals, sought out challenges, and had strong work ethics. The author concluded that teachers and counsel-ors need to examine the motive behind perfectionism in their students. Perfec-tionism may be healthy if the motives behind it are linked to a need to achieve since achievement motives can stimu-late further achievement. Fear-of-failure motives, however, can lead to depression and anxiety.

Speirs Neumeister, K. L. (2004c). Factors influencing the development of per-fectionism in gifted college students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 48, 259–274.

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that contribute to socially prescribed and self-oriented perfectionism in gifted college students. Using a qualitative interview design, the researchers found that parents who were perfectionists, and who had an au-thoritarian parenting style, contributed to their children’s fear of disappoint-ing others, having a self-worth tied to achievement, and having a percep-tion of stringent expectations. This influenced the development of socially prescribed perfectionism. In contrast, mastery of early academic experiences without effort, no previous experience of academic failure, and modeling of parental perfectionism all contributed to the development of self-oriented perfectionism.

Speirs Neumeister, K. L., & Finch, H. (2006). Perfectionism in high-ability students: Relational precursors and influences on achievement motivation. Gifted Child Quarterly, 50, 238–251.

A sample of 265 college freshman honor students were given several questionnaires and assessments includ-ing a parenting style questionnaire, the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Relationship questionnaire, and an


achievement goal questionnaire. The purpose of the study was to test a model that proposed that parenting styles are related to attachment styles, and at-tachment styles, in turn, are related to perfectionism. The model also indicated that perfectionism influences achieve-ment goals. This model was tested using a multiple-groups path analysis. The study found that parenting style was related to attachment, and attachment, in turn, was related to perfectionism. Secure attachment was associated with authoritative and permissive parenting, and insecure attachment was associ-ated with authoritarian and uninvolved parenting. The results indicated that in-secure attachment was related to either self-oriented or socially prescribed per-fectionism. In addition, the study found that perfectionism influenced achieve-ment goals. Self-oriented perfectionists were more likely to strive for mastery or set performance approach goals, but socially prescribed perfectionists were more likely to set performance approach goals or performance avoidance goals. The authors concluded that socially prescribed perfectionists may set goals that reflect an underlying fear of failure. Parents and teachers should examine achievement motives of their students and create environments of acceptance to help them change their motives from fear of failure to desire for achievement.

Tsui, J. M. (2007). Effects of math anxiety and perfectionism on timed versus untimed math testing in math-ematically gifted sixth graders. Roeper Review, 29, 132–139.

Thirty-six mathematically gifted sixth graders were the subjects of this study ex-amining the effects of math anxiety and perfectionism. Each subject was given a paper-and-pencil calculations test in ei-ther a timed or untimed condition. After taking the test and answering three ques-tionnaires, they were then given a com-parable form of the test in the alternate condition. If, for example, a student took the untimed assessment first, they would take the timed assessment last. The researchers found that the participants performed better during the untimed tests versus the timed tests, however, this was only significant when the timed condition came before the untimed con-dition. The results also showed that those children with higher levels of math anxi-ety or perfectionism had smaller discrep-ancies in their performance on the timed test and untimed test. Three measures of perfectionism were found to have positive correlations with math anxiety. These included concern over mistakes, doubts about actions, and parental criticism. The authors concluded that as math-anxiety level increases, perfectionism level also increases.

Vandiver, B. J., & Worrell, F. C. (2002). The reliability and validity of scores on the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised with academically talented middle school students. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 13, 108–119.

The purpose of this study was to ex-amine the reliability and validity of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R). Participants consisted of 342 academi-cally talented middle school students at-tending a summer program at a research university. The students were given the APS-R, three other questionnaires, and the Measure of Perceived Life Chances. After the scores were analyzed, the au-thors concluded that this study provided preliminary support for the APS-R as a measure of perfectionism. Reliability estimates were in the moderate to high range, and the mean scores and reliabil-ity estimates paralleled findings of stud-ies on similar samples. The authors also suggested that with the addition of this reliable scale to the other measures of perfectionism, more longitudinal stud-ies and studies using multiple instru-ments need to be conducted for further research on perfectionism.


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