This report is intended to provide some preliminary excellence gap data and kick start the national discussion on the importance of excellence in the national and state K-12 education systems. After briefly summarizing recent literature on the excellence gap, the trends in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores along gender, racial, income, and English language lines are discussed, with a brief examination of excellence gaps as measured by state accountability assessments. Next, the degree to which achievement gaps at the advanced level may be connected to gaps at the basic and proficient level of achievement is considered. After a discussion of state and federal policies targeting high-ability students, an empirical analysis of the potential factors influencing the size and trend of excellence gaps is presented. Finally, conclusions as well as policy recommendations are offered. (Contains 17 figures, 9 tables and 21 footnotes.).

2017 Texas Association for Gifted and Talented Legacy Scholar Book Award 2017 National Association of Gifted Children Scholar Book of the Year Award In Excellence Gaps in Education, Jonathan A. Plucker and Scott J. Peters shine a spotlight on “excellence gaps”—the achievement gaps among subgroups of students performing at the highest levels of achievement. Much of the focus of recent education reform has been on closing gaps in achievement between students from different racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic backgrounds by bringing all students up to minimum levels of proficiency. Yet issues related to excellence gaps have been largely absent from discussions about how to improve our schools and communities. Plucker and Peters argue that these significant gaps reflect the existence of a persistent talent underclass in the United States among African American, Hispanic, Native American, and poor students, resulting in an incalculable loss of potential among our fastest growing populations. Drawing on the latest research and a wide range of national and international data, the authors outline the scope of the problem and make the case that excellence gaps should be targeted for elimination. They identify promising interventions for talent development already underway in schools and provide a detailed review of potential strategies, including universal screening, flexible grouping, targeted programs, and psychosocial interventions. Excellence Gaps in Education has the potential for changing our national conversation about equity and excellence and bringing fresh attention to the needs of high-potential students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Now in its Second Edition, Introduction to Gifted Education presents a well-researched yet accessible introduction to gifted education, focusing on equity and supporting diverse learners. Inclusive in nature, this essential text is filled with varied perspectives and approaches to the critical topics and issues affecting gifted education. Chapters cover topics such as gifted education standards, social-emotional needs, cognitive development, diverse learners, identification, programming options, creativity, professional development, and curriculum. The book provides a comprehensive look at each topic, including an overview of big ideas, its history, and a thorough discussion to help those new to the field gain a better understanding of gifted students and strategies to address their needs. Filled with rich resources to engage readers in their own learning, Introduction to Gifted Education, Second Edition is the definitive textbook for courses introducing teachers to gifted education.

Teacher Education and Practice, a peer-refereed journal, is dedicated to the encouragement and the dissemination of research and scholarship related to professional education. The journal is concerned, in the broadest sense, with teacher preparation, practice and policy issues related to the teaching profession, as well as being concerned with learning in the school setting. The journal also serves as a forum for the exchange of diverse ideas and points of view within these purposes. As a forum, the journal offers a public space in which to critically examine current discourse and practice as well as engage in generative dialogue. Alternative forms of inquiry and representation are invited, and authors from a variety of backgrounds and diverse perspectives are encouraged to contribute. Teacher Education & Practice is published by Rowman & Littlefield.

This book examines how children’s and young adult literature addresses and interrogates the legacies of American school desegregation. Such literature narrates not only the famous battles to implement desegregation in the South, in places like Little Rock, Arkansas, but also more insidious and less visible legacies, such as re-segregation within schools through the mechanism of disability diagnosis. Novelizations of children’s experiences with school desegregation comment upon the politics of getting African-American children access to white schools; but more than this, as school stories, they also comment upon how structural racism operates in the classroom and mutates, over the course of decades, through the pedagogical practices depicted in literature for young readers. Lesley combines approaches from critical race theory, disability studies, and educational philosophy in order to investigate how the educational market simultaneously constrains how racism in schools can be presented to young readers and also provides channels for radical critiques of pedagogy and visions of alternative systems. The volume examines a range of titles, from novels that directly engage the Brown v. Board of Education decision, such as Sharon Draper’s Fire From the Rock and Dorothy Sterling’s Mary Jane, to novels that engage less obvious legacies of desegregation, such as Cynthia Voigt’s Dicey’s Song, Sharon Flake’s Pinned, Virginia Hamilton’s The Planet of Junior Brown, and Louis Sachar’s Holes. This book will be of interest to scholars of American studies, children’s literature, and educational philosophy and history.

Providing a cornerstone to the global debate on equity and inclusion within education, this handbook explores equity issues pertaining to poverty and social class, race, ethnicity, sociocultural, sociolinguistic exclusion in education and recognises intersectionality and gender across these dimensions. This carefully curated collection of essays written by international experts promotes inclusive systems in education that explicitly recognise the voices of learners who may be at risk of marginalisation, exclusion or underachievement. Developing a multilayered innovative conceptual framework involving spatial, emotional-relational and dialogical 'turns' for education, it emphasises key system points for reform, including building strategic bridges between health and education for vulnerable groups and shifts in focus for initial teacher education and the wider curriculum. The handbook is organised into the following key parts: Theoretical Frameworks Funding Models and Structures for Equity and Inclusive Systems Exclusion and Discrimination Bridging Health and Education Agency and Empowerment Outreach and Engagement The Routledge International Handbook of Equity and Inclusion in Education will be of great value to academics operating in the areas of education, psychology, sociology, social policy, ethnography, cultural studies; researchers in university research centres and in policy institutes pertaining to education, poverty, social inclusion as well as international organisations involved with inclusion in education.

The new Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards should be part of every school district's repertoire of standards to ensure that the learning needs of advanced students are being met. NAGC Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards: A Guide to Planning and Implementing High-Quality Services details six standards that address the areas critical to effective teaching and learning, along with suggestions for implementing each one. The Gifted Education Programming Standards are focused on student outcomes that address both cognitive and affective areas. Aligned to each of the outcomes are research- and practice-based strategies known to be effective for this special population of students. The book includes sample assessments of student products and performances, which will assist schools in developing program and service evaluation benchmarks. This book is a must-have for school leaders and gifted education professionals who want to offer the most effective services for gifted and advanced students.