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Rethinking Gifted Education with Scott Peters

May 9, 2019

Today it’s a great pleasure to have Dr. Scott Peters on the podcast. Dr. Peters is an associate professor of educational foundations and the Richard and Veronica Teller Endowed Faculty Fellow of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he teaches courses on measurement and assessment, research methodology, and gifted education. His research focuses on educational assessment, gifted and talented student identification, disproportionality within K-12 education, and educational policy. He is the first author of Beyond Gifted Education: Designing and Implementing Advanced Academic Programs and the co-author (along with Jonathan Plucker) of Excellence Gaps in Education: Expanding Opportunities for Talented Students, published by Harvard Education Press.

In this episode we discuss:

  • Advocates vs. scientists in the field of gifted education
  • Does teacher training in gifted education have any effect on self-reported teaching in the classroom?
  • How the desire for good advocacy in gifted education can bias good science
  • The real need to advocate for kids who aren’t being challenged in the regular classroom
  • The absurdity of teaching children based solely on how old they are
  • Is there room at the table for all different perspectives in the gifted education field?
  • The problem with the “gifted” label
  • How can you balance excellence with equity?
  • How to close the “excellence gap” in gifted education
  • What domains should be included in gifted education?
  • The importance of “frontloading” opportunities in school
  • Acceleration vs. enrichment
  • What happens when addressing underrepresentation is the main goal of gifted education?
  • The value of using local norms for gifted student selection
  • Is complete excellence gap reduction a reasonable goal of gifted education?
  • Scott’s plan for addressing excellence gaps in gifted education


3 Responses to “Rethinking Gifted Education with Scott Peters”

  1. Catherine Courreges says:

    I very much am enjoying today’s podcast. May I recommend both of you look into the Academic UIL system used in the state of Texas public schools. We have high school academic teams that compete against other schools in much the same manner as athletic teams do. This system does seem to identify talented kids of all races and gives them access to prestige within the school and if they make it to the state tournament faith in their own abilities beyond our small rural East Texas town. Our school is a Title 1 school where every student receives free lunches. But our policy debate team placed third at state, another minority boy placed third at nationals in Poetry interpretation, and another won the state math competition as a sophomore and received a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation scholarship. The state of Texas school system does a superb job of identifying talent — even in welding!

  2. Catherine Courreges says:

    P.S. this particular highschool is 70% Hispanic, 20% African American and 10% white

  3. Randee Blair says:

    Thanks for easy-listening podcast Scott and Scott.
    Catherine—it is always great to hear when something is going well.

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