Fourth Down and Inches

Just as there are critical moments and plays in any sports contest, there are critical times in educational decision making when the actions of leaders must be sufficiently creative and forceful to propel a field forward with enough force to sustain a drive toward desired goals. The new millennium appears to be a time when the field of gifted education very much needs leadership to capitalize on the gains we have made during the past three decades. Like a football team that has utilized every strategy in its game plan to march down the field for a touchdown and finds itself just inches from the goal, the field of gifted education has taken numerous actions that have resulted in great progress for the field, and it now stands poised for a major score. However, like the football team facing a formidable defense, gifted education still faces many obstacles to the realization of its goals. Some of the barriers to success have been imposed by others, but there have been (and still are) times when we have been our own worst enemy, when we have created the penalties that have moved us backward rather than forward. A necessary Caveat: In the sections that follow, I offer criticisms that reflect my observations of practice. In most (but not all) of these cases, it is not the theories, conceptions, or ideas that are flawed, but the ways in which these ideas have been interpreted or implemented. As Einstein could never have predicted that his work would lead to the mass destruction that ensued, the individuals and groups that offered the alternatives discussed cannot control the ways in which their ideas are translated, offered, or implemented. The Big Plays That Have Led the Drive' The Marland Report The game really began with the Marland report of 1972. In significant ways, there were great gains made immediately as a result of the field's success in not only gaining federal recognition of the population of students identified as gifted, but also by the endorsement of a broadened conception of giftedness. While this was not the first such multifaceted definition, the national stature of a report to Congress provided a level of credibility and authority necessary for widespread attention. Further, the report and the establishment of an Office of Gifted and Talented at the federal level were an impetus to legislation and funding for a great many states. In response, renewed attention was given to the development and implementation of models of identification, programming, and curriculum for use in schools. Educational options that emerged largely modeled the special education resource room, and programming for gifted students was translated into one-hour or one-half-day-a-week instruction in locations isolated from the general curriculum and classroom both physically and mentally. More attention was paid to identification and programming than to the substance of the curricular offerings. Curricular offerings were based primarily on psychological models such as Guilford's Structure of the Intellect (Guilford, 1967; Meeker, 1969) and The Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives and the Taxonomy of Affective Objectives (Bloom, 1956; Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964). Emphasis on creativity and other process skills dominated classroom activities. The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth One notable exception to process-oriented curriculum was the development of an accelerated mathematics program and, eventually, a program for verbally talented students (Stanley, Keating, & Fox, 1974). While students for these programs were identified with the assistance of public and private schools, the offerings were directed by staff at Johns Hopkins University, and schools resisted acceleration of students as an option for gifted services (Southern & Jones, 1991). For several years, the acceleration versus enrichment debate needlessly recurred as a focus of programming issues and, perhaps, impeded progress. …