Closing Poverty-Based Excellence Gaps: Conceptual, Measurement, and Educational Issues

Abstract

The number of economically vulnerable students in the United States is large and growing. In this article, we examine income-based excellence gaps and describe recent controversies in the definition and measurement of poverty, with an eye toward their application to gifted education and meeting the needs of talented, economically vulnerable students. Regardless of how poverty is conceptualized, evidence suggests that U.S. childhood poverty rates are indeed high, both in absolute terms and relative to other countries, and that income-related achievement disparities are similarly large. Recommendations are included for interventions to close persistent poverty excellence gaps, including frontloading, broadened understanding of opportunity, universal screening using local norms, improved educator preparation and support, state K-12 accountability systems that reward schools for closing excellence gaps, widespread use of ability grouping, and selective use of psychosocial interventions at the college level.