569277 research-article2015
GCTXXX10.1177/1076217515569277Gifted Child TodayGifted Child Today
GIFTED CHILD TODAY
April 2015
Columns
Historical Perspectives The Gifted At Risk Jennifer L. Jolly1
Keywords: history of gifted, gifted education, advocacy
A
Nation at Risk released just over 30 years ago in 1983 “define[d] the problems afflicting American education” (U.S. Department of Education, 1983, p. 1) including those of gifted children and placed education at the forefront of the national agenda (Johanningmeier, 2010). The publication of A Nation at Risk was also a decade after the pivotal federal Marland Report had been released in 1972 outlining how American schools were derelict in meeting the needs of gifted students, which included recommendations of how to address these inadequacies. Although the Marland Report and subsequent legislation had improved education for gifted students throughout selected parts of the United States, A Nation at Risk signaled that glaring gaps continued to plague the education of gifted children. The election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency of the United States in November of 1980 was on a platform to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, to reduce the role of the federal government in American education, and to implement tuition tax credits and/or school vouchers. Education was to be “high on [Reagan’s] national agenda but low in his budgetary priorities” (New York State Department of Education, n.d., para. 2). Under Reagan’s leadership, Congress authorized the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA), reducing federal aid to schools by 15% or US$1 billion, thus transferring both greater funding responsibility and decisionmaking powers to individual states. Congress stopped short by refusing to eliminate the newly formed Department of Education. A Nation at Risk would eventually cause Reagan and Congress to reverse the federal government’s perspective toward its function in the education of American children.
Secretary of Education and the National Commission on Excellence in Education Terrel H. Bell, Reagan’s choice for secretary of education and long-time educator in the state of Utah, had already served as the U.S. commissioner of education from 1974 to 1976 before the role became a formal cabinet position in 1979. He was
well-versed in the ways of Washington politics and aware of Reagan’s ambivalence toward the position stating, I knew his [Reagan] quest for this last member of his cabinet had been delayed because of lack of conviction concerning its importance . . . . He emphasized his interest in schools and colleges and his firm conviction that education should be primarily a state rather than a federal responsibility. (Gardner, 2005, p. 106) Despite Bell’s reservations, he accepted the position and found himself in the midst of a ground swell of mounting anxiety regarding the nation’s student performance on national and international assessments and the role that the federal government should play addressing these insufficiencies, much of the criticism originating from the far political right toward America’s public schools (Fiske, 1986). Bell reasoned that a commission was needed to gauge the actual state of the country’s schools and then provide recommendations to address the weaknesses and challenges. However, the White House had little interest in appointing a Presidential commission, so Bell took it upon himself to organize a cabinet level commission that would represent a wide swath of political ideologies, educational backgrounds, and diversity in gender and experiences (Gardner, 2005). To lead this group, Bell chose David Pierpont Gardner, President of the University of Utah. Gardner had earned his PhD at University of California (UC), Berkeley, and spent most of his academic career in the UC system (he would return in 1983 as the president of UC). As chairman of this panel, Gardner set forth a list of conditions, which included the following points: Gardner and Bell would appoint the commission members and could veto each other’s choices; possible appointees would be nonpartisan, the report would be the commission’s—no outside pressure would be applied; there would be sufficient funding; the work would be completed within 18 months; the report would be presented to Reagan; Bell would publish the report regardless of whether the President agreed with its findings; and the report would be disseminated as widely as possible (Gardner, 2005).
DOI: 10.1177/1076217515569277. From 1University of New South Wales. Address correspondence to: Jennifer L. Jolly, PhD, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; email:
[email protected]. For reprints and permissions queries, please visit SAGE’s Web site at http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Copyright © 2015 The Author(s)
124
GIFTED CHILD TODAY
vol. 38 ■ no. 2
David P. Gardner (Chair) President University of Utah and President-Elect, University of California Salt Lake City, Utah
Yvonne W. Larson (Vice-Chair) Immediate Past-President San Diego City School Board San Diego, California
William O. Baker Chairman of the Board (Retired) Bell Telephone Laboratories Murray Hill, New Jersey
Anne Campbell Former Commissioner of Education State of Nebraska Lincoln, Nebraska
Emeral A. Crosby Principal Northern High School Detroit, Michigan
Charles A. Foster, Jr. Immediate Past-President Foundation for Teaching Economics San Francisco, California
Norman C. Francis President Xavier University of Louisiana New Orleans, Louisiana
A Bartlett Giamatti President Yale University New Haven, Connecticut
Shirley Gordon President Highline Community College Midway, Washington
Robert V. Haderlein Immediate Past-President National School Boards Association Girard, Kansas
Gerald Holton Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts
Richard Wallace Principal Lutheran High School East Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Albert H. Quie Former Governor State of Minnesota St. Paul, Minnesota
Francisco D. Sanchez, Jr. Superintendent of Schools Albuquerque Public Schools Albuquerque, New Mexico
Glenn T. Seaborg University Professor of Chemistry and Nobel Laureate University of California Berkeley, California
Jay Sommer National Teacher of the Year, 1981–1982 Foreign Language Department New Rochelle High School New Rochelle, New York
Annette Y. Kirk Kirk Associates Mescosta, Michigan Figure 1. Members of the national commission on excellence in education.
The 18-member panel (see Figure 1) were, 1. To review and synthesize the data and scholarly literature on the quality of learning and teaching in the nation’s schools, colleges, and universities, both public and private, with special concern for the educational experience of teenage youth; 2. To examine and to compare and contrast the curricula, standards, and expectations of the educational systems of several advanced countries with those of the United States;
3. To study a representative sampling of university and college admission standards and lower division course requirements with particular reference to the impact upon the enhancement of quality and the promotion of excellence such standards may have on high school curricula and on expected levels of high school academic achievement; 4. To review and to describe educational programs that are recognized as preparing students who consistently attain higher than average scores in college entrance examinations and who meet with uncommon success the 125
GIFTED CHILD TODAY
5.
6.
7. 8.
demands placed on them by the nation’s colleges and universities; To review the major changes that have occurred in American education as well as events in society during the past quarter century that have significantly affected educational achievement; To hold hearings and to receive testimony and expert advice on efforts that could and should be taken to foster higher levels of quality and academic excellence in the nation’s school, colleges, and universities; To do all other things needed to define the problems of and the barriers to attaining greater levels of excellence in American education; and To report and to make practical recommendations for action to be taken by educators, public officials, governing boards, parents, and others having a vital interest in American education and a capacity to influence it for the better. (U.S. Department of Education, 1983, Appendix A)
The commission set about this weighty enterprise considering first what they did not know and collected testimony and other data before offering individual opinions and viewpoints at commission meetings. Gardner (2005) wanted their initial meeting to avoid “prematurely settling into a particular point of view” (p. 117). Data were collected from testimony from researchers, educators, community members, parents, students, and other stakeholders. There were 44 commissioned papers, public reports, letters from the public, literature reviews, and reports from programs that already provided evidence of positive student impact. The panel also studied the educational practices of countries that outperformed the United States on international assessments. The panel met 7 times between October 1981 and April 1983 (Gardner, 2005). Six hearings were held on subjects the commissioners thought to be particularly important, science, mathematics, and technology education; language and literacy, and skills for academic learning; teaching and teachers’ education; college admissions and the transition to postsecondary education; education for a productive role in a productive faculty; and finally education for the gifted and talented. Gifted education’s best and brightest scholars, administrators, and practitioners came from across the United States to testify on behalf on the needs of gifted children at Harvard University. These figures included James Gallagher, Joseph Renzulli, Alexinia Baldwin, June Cox, John Feldhusen, Julian Stanley, Abraham Tannenbaum, and James Alvino just to name a handful of the leading figures of the time (U.S. Department of Education, 1983).
The Presentation of Findings In considering the format of the final report, the commission decided on a different strategy—an open letter to the American public. Unlike typical reports to emerge from similar federal government commissions that sounded like scholarly research papers, this report would be written in language that would 126
April 2015
appeal to the general public and not be more than 40 pages in length. The report’s recommendations focused around the following five topics: 1. The curriculum or content—State and local high school graduate requirements were to include 4 years of English, 3 years of mathematics, 3 years of science, 3 years of social studies, and half a year of computer science. Those students going on to college were strongly encouraged to take 2 years of foreign language. 2. Standards and expectations—Schools, college, and universities all needed to develop and implement more rigorous standards for admission, content taught, and measures for academic achievement. 3. Time—U.S. students needed to be spending more time in school. The school day should be longer, the school year extended, and how the school day was constructed should make better use of teachers’ instructional time. 4. Teaching—Pre-service teachers should meet high educational standards and changes should be made to make teaching a more worthwhile and esteemed profession. 5. Leadership and fiscal support—Principals, superintendents, and elected public officials at all levels should provide leadership to institute recommendations set forth by panel. State and federal governments are also responsible for providing fiscal support for such endeavors. Educators, parents, and others should advocate for the schools and seek public support for their needs (U.S. Department of Education, 1983). Specific language regarding the gifted appears throughout the recommendations. From the introduction, individual differences in learning are addressed and gifted students are used as the example with the concept of “a curriculum enriched and accelerated beyond even the needs of other students of high ability” (U. S. Department of Education, 1983, para. 3). In the Standards and Expectations section, it was recommended that funds be made available to support textbook production for outlying student populations like the gifted and talented. Within the recommendation of Time, although the gifted are not specifically named, the commission put forth the idea that children’s academic progression through school should not be limited by ability or chronological age. Leadership and Fiscal Support recommendations encouraged the collaboration between federal, state, and local entities to help meet the needs of gifted students (along with the socioeconomically disadvantaged, minority, and language minority, and the handicapped). The report also outlined many indicators of risk, one of them being that “over ½ of the population of gifted students do match their tested ability with comparable achievement in school” (U. S. Department of Education, 1983, p. 10). The panel’s recommendations had come after a particularly great time of upheaval for gifted education. The Marland Report and successive legislation allowed a forward progression for gifted
GIFTED CHILD TODAY
vol. 38 ■ no. 2
education during much of the 1970s. However, at the beginning of the 1980s, election of the Reagan administration had systematically started to eliminate offices within the Department of Education and one of the first chosen was the Office of Gifted and Talented Education. The ECIA also ended any federal funding that states were receiving for gifted education (Jolly, 2014).
Conflict of Interest
The Meaning for Gifted Education
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The impact of A Nation at Risk for gifted education was not immediate or direct. However, the document would be used as an instrument to advocate on behalf of gifted students and their educational needs, referencing the direct language pertaining to gifted students. The Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act would eventually be passed by the U.S. Congress 5 years later in 1988, which still provides funding for demonstration grants, implementation of original strategies, and monies for the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. Despite these recommendations and those echoed in subsequent reports such as National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent in 1993 and A Nation Deceived in 2004, gifted education still wrestles with many of the same issues that A Nation at Risk identified. Although the authors of A Nation at Risk would argue that the report was intended to support and promote the needs of gifted students, it instead had damaging consequence, albeit inadvertent. The report recommended for a nationwide system of standardized tests, state and local standardized tests that would gauge the level of achievement of American students—“This call for a nationwide system of tests marked a new era in federal educational policy, an era in which equal educational opportunities would be measured . . . in terms of standardized test” (New York State Department of Education, n.d., para. 2). Due to the high stakes that were attached to these types of standardized test, teachers adopted very regulated and standardized ways of teaching. Differentiated learning for the needs of gifted students was limited (Moon, Brighton, & Callahan, 2003). With each successive reemphasis on standardized testing and accountability, gifted students’ needs were left further behind (Jolly & Makel, 2010). A Nation at Risk originally sought to quiet the critics of the American education. Instead, it created a maelstrom of reform that pushed rigor and accountability in classrooms across the United States. The report also sought to elevate the needs of gifted students. However, these needs were overshadowed by more pressing perceived needs—a pattern that continues today.
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
References Fiske, E. B. (1986, April 27). Effort to improve U.S. schools entering a new phase. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes. com/1986/04/27/us/effort-to-improve-us-schools-entering-a-new-phase. html Gardner, D. P. (2005). Earning my degree: Memoirs of an American university president. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johanningmeier, E. V. (2010). A nation at risk and sputnik. American Educational History Journal, 37, 347-365. Jolly, J. L. (2014). Building gifted education: One state at a time. Gifted Child Today, 37, 258-260. Jolly, J. L., & Makel, M. (2010). No Child Left Behind: The inadvertent costs for high-achieving and gifted students. Childhood Education, 87, 35-40. Moon, T. R., Brighton, C. M., & Callahan, C. M. (2003). State standardized testing programs: Friend or foe of gifted education? Roeper Review, 25, 49-60. New York State Department of Education. (n.d.). Reagan years: A nation at risk. Retrieved from http://www.archives.nysed.gov/edpolicy/research/ res_essay_reagan_anational_risk.shtml U.S. Department of Education. (1983). A nation at risk: An imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: Author.
Bio Jennifer L. Jolly, PhD, is a senior lecturer in gifted education at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include the history of gifted education and parents of gifted children. She serves on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal for the Education of the Gifted and Gifted Child Today. She also served as a vice president for the Association for the Gifted of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC-TAG) board. She received the 2011 Louisiana Council for Exceptional Children Higher Education Professional Award, the 2012 Michael Pyryt Collaboration Award, and NAGC’s 2013 Early Leader Award. Her classroom experience includes 8 years in the Texas public school system working with both gifted and regular education students.
127
