Think Again: Are Education Programs for High-Achievers Inherently Inequitable?

America's reckoning with racial injustice and the pursuit of equity have led some public school systems to reduce or terminate (or at least question) special programs for high achievers, such as "gifted" education, honors courses, and selective high schools. Historically, such programs have served disproportionately few Black, Hispanic, Native American, and low-income students. Their critics have used this fact to call for their overhaul or elimination--a position they often justify with claims that the programs don't improve participants' academic outcomes, especially those of marginalized students, and that more heterogeneous classrooms work just as well. This policy brief challenges those claims. It argues that, rather than harming marginalized students of high ability, these programs are the best way to maximize their achievement. That's because interventions, including acceleration and readiness grouping, benefit high-achieving students from every sort of background while doing minimal harm to lower- and middle-achieving peers; more heterogeneous classroom groupings, however beneficial for some students (when done well), rarely succeed at educating students across the wide range of achievement at all grade levels. This reality is especially concerning when more effective methods exist to identify and nurture the talents and abilities of students who are Black, Hispanic, low-income, and otherwise underserved.