Annotated Bibliography

Students who participated in the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY) Academic Programs were compared, over five years, with nonparticipating eligible students. Both groups exhibited high academic achievement, but the CTY youth took more advanced courses at an earlier age and enrolled in more college courses while in high school.

Reported is the 20-year follow-up of 1,975 mathematically gifted adolescents whose assessments at age 12-14 yrs revealed robust gender differences in mathematical reasoning ability. Both sexes became exceptional achievers and perceived themselves as such; they reported uniformly high levels of degree attainment and satisfaction with both their career direction and their overall success. The earlier sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability did predict differential educational and occupational outcomes. The observed differences also appeared to be a function of sex differences in preferences for a) inorganic versus organic disciplines and b) a career-focused versus more-balanced life. Because profile differences in abilities and preferences are longitudinally stable, males probably will remain more represented in some disciplines, whereas females are likely to remain more represented in others. These data have policy implications for higher education and the world of work.

An evaluation of the Advanced Placement (AP) program from the point of view of intellectually precocious youth and their subsequent educational-vocational outcomes, analyzing normative and idiographic longitudinal data collected over the past three decades from 3,700 participants. Most took AP courses in high school, and those who did frequently nominated an AP course as their favorite. Students who took AP courses, compared to their intellectual peers who did not, appeared more satisfied with the intellectual caliber of their high school experience and, ultimately, achieved more. Overall, this special population placed a premium on intellectual challenge in high school, and found the lack of such challenge distressing. These findings can inform contemporary educational policy debates regarding the AP program; they also have general implications for designing and evaluating educational interventions for students.

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The long-term effects of various accelerative options were evaluated using a group of 510 students identified as highly gifted in junior high. Their academic achievements, extracurricular activities, goals and aspirations, and social and emotional adjustment were assessed after completing high school. No discernible negative effects of accelerative strategies were found.

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Over a 2-year period underachieving gifted students achieved at an accelerated rate when given attention to basic skills featured in the gifted education program of the San Diego Unified School District.

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This study sought to understand the relationship between principals’ attitudes toward differentiation and middle school teachers’ willingness and ability to differentiate. Differentiation allows teachers to systematically address the needs of all learners, including gifted students, in diverse classrooms. The principals and faculty at three schools were interviewed and observed over the course of three years (1997-2000) as a subset of a larger study. Since the primary interests of this study were teacher-principal interactions, the meanings each group assigned to the process of adapting differentiated strategies, and teacher and principal perceptions of their own roles in the change process, the study was based on theories of interpretive sociology and incorporated several different qualitative data collection methods.

A principal’s attitude toward differentiation, level of support for the teachers, belief in and desire for change, and amount of focus on differentiation in particular played key roles in teachers’ willingness and ability to differentiate curriculum, instruction, and assessment in this study. The results suggest that successful implementation of differentiation is more likely when principals understand the importance of differentiation and provide the resources and emotional support faculty need to successfully integrate differentiation into their classrooms.

In the course of reviewing the literature relevant to this study, the authors note that the typical public school classroom contains 27 children whose academic performance levels typically span more than five grade levels. Despite recommendations for differentiated instruction, the most common techniques in middle school classrooms are still traditional lecture, drill-and-practice, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups, and direct instruction. As a result, understanding the factors behind implementing differentiation in classrooms is more important than ever. The authors make suggestions for a successful transition to differentiation strategies, as well as ideas for further research, including the impact of No Child Left Behind on attempts to implement differentiation.

Readers should note that although the authors took measures to increase the reliability of their data, only three schools were studied, each of which differed greatly from the others (teacher-principal relationships, socioeconomic status, geography, etc.), so more studies are needed to fully understand the effect of teacher-principal relationships on the effectiveness of implementation of differentiation in classrooms.

This study assessed the social adjustment of female early college entrants using standard measures of adjustment and two comparison groups (traditional college students and boarding school students). Early entrants evidenced higher social conformity and solitary activity than boarding students. They evidenced social adjustment similar to college students but reported a high level of dissatisfaction with their social lives.

When high ability students (N=19) who had entered college before 15 years of age were compared, 50 years later, with equally intelligent students who entered college between 16 to 20 years of age, results found both groups equal in psychosocial adjustment and long term achievement though younger college students were more often rated as high achievers in early adulthood.

Certain highly able and motivated young adolescents can successfully pursue full-time college-level studies without unreasonable compromises to psychological and social adjustment. Ways in which an adequate program facilitating early college entrance might be structured are suggested.

As a follow-up study, the author evaluated one hundred students toward the end of fifth grade in an effort to determine the effects of accelerating bright older students from second to fourth grade after a five-week summer session. The study evaluated fifty male and fifty female students who were subdivided into five equal groups. Groups of ten students of each sex had been accelerated (Acc) and were compared with groups of twenty non-accelerated fifth graders who had

• superior abilities younger than the median age (5SY)
• superior abilities older than the median age (5SO)
• average abilities younger than the median age (5AO)
• average abilities older than the median age (5AY)

Participants took standardized tests that evaluated their educational achievements, problem solving ability, creative thinking ability, psychomotor abilities, handwriting skills, peer acceptance, attitudes toward school and learning, ethical values, and intellectual and affective characteristic. The accelerated group was at or above the levels of grade and intellect peers for most of the tested areas. The accelerated students sampled toward the end of the second year after their acceleration showed no negative impacts regarding the grade skip. These students were equal or superior to non-accelerated average pupils and younger students of superior abilities in all nine measures. The accelerated students were equal to the older students of superior abilities in all areas but Word Knowledge, Language Total, and Handwriting Legibility.

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U.S. math-science graduate students possessing world-class talent (368 males, 346 females) were assessed on psychological attributes and personal experiences to examine how their talents emerged and developed. Comparisons were made with mathematically talented students (528 males, 228 females) identified around age 13 and tracked into adulthood by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). Well before college, both samples were academically distinguished; however the graduate students could be identified during adolescence as a subset of mathematically talented youths based on their nonintellectual attributes. Their profiles corresponded to what earlier psychological studies found to characterize distinguished (and exclusively male) scientists: exceptional quantitative reasoning abilities, relatively stronger quantitative than verbal reasoning ability, salient scientific interests and values, and persistence in seeking out opportunities to study scientific topics and develop scientific skills. On these attributes, sex differences were minimal for the graduate students (but not for the SMPY comparison groups). Developing exceptional scientific expertise apparently requires special educational experiences, but these necessary experiences are similar for the two sexes.

Adolescents identified before the age of 13 (N = 320) as having exceptional mathematical or verbal reasoning abilities (top 1 in 10,000) were tracked over 10 years. They pursued doctoral degrees at rates over 50 times base-rate expectations, with several participants having created noteworthy literary, scientific, or technical products by their early 20s. Early observed distinctions in intellectual strength (viz., quantitative reasoning ability over verbal reasoning ability, and vice versa) predicted sharp differences in their developmental trajectories and occupational pursuits. This special population strongly preferred educational opportunities tailored to their precocious rate of learning (i.e., appropriate developmental placement), with 95% using some form of acceleration to individualize their education.

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The article describes an innovative model of female talent development based upon the life experiences of gifted women from a wide variety of backgrounds and talent domains. Key issues addressed by the model are the personal, professional, and cultural challenges common to gifted females and strategies for coping with them.

This reprint of an article on how students who enter college early perform academically and socially is preceded by a commentary that discusses the need to provide gifted students with the option of entering college early because of the lack of college-level courses at the high school level.

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The academic, social, and emotional benefits of acceleration are widely known, yet criticism and reluctance to use this educational intervention persist. Some school personnel and families fear that children who accelerate through grades will experience serious social or emotional adjustment problems. This research project compared a nationally representative sample of well-adjusted and poorly adjusted accelerants so as to examine the differences in adjustment among individual accelerants. The sample was drawn from the National Education Longitudinal Study: 88 database. Surprisingly, results showed that the best-adjusted and least adjusted accelerants were similar in many ways. There were no significant differences for gender, race, family size, birth order, family composition, income, educational level of parents, kind of school, percentage of minority students in their school, serious behavior difficulties, certain out-of-school activities, community type, or community location. However, parental involvement in a child's school and education, and access to accelerated, advanced, enriched, or gifted classes were more often associated with healthy adjustment. Therefore, the differences in well-adjusted and poorly adjusted accelerants appear to be related to the ways that parents and schools interact with their students.

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At age 13, 393 boys and 170 girls scoring at the top 0.5% in general intelligence completed the Scholastic Assessment Test Mathematics (SAT-M) and Verbal (SAT-V) subtests and the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) Space Relations (SR) and Mechanical Reasoning (MR) subtests. Longitudinal data were collected through follow up questionnaires completed at ages 18, 23, and 33. Multivariate statistical methods were employed using the SAT-M, SAT-V, and a DAT (SR+MR) composite to predict a series of developmentally sequenced educational-volitional outcomes: (a) favorite and least favorite high school class, (b) undergraduate degree field, (c) graduate degree field, and (d) occupation at age 33. Spatial ability added incremental validity to SAT-M and SAT-V assessments in predicting educational-volitional outcomes over these successive time frames. It appears that spatial ability assessments can complement contemporary talent search procedures. The amount of lost potential for artistic, scientific, and technical disciplines that results from neglecting this critical dimension of nonverbal ideation is discussed.

A follow-up study involving 2,021 students identified as academically gifted by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) was conducted to determine the effectiveness of college courses for facilitating the education of intellectually talented junior and senior high school students. Advantages of a college course over acceleration, student requirements for participation in the college course program, and college enrollment procedures were considered when advising a student eligible for college courses. Of the 1,510 students returning the College Information Questionnaire, 83 students had taken college courses. Among findings were that students' grade-point average (GPA) for the college courses taken was 3.57 (on a four-point scale) and that SMPY students rarely encountered social difficulties in the college classroom.

This article reports follow-up information on six very young college graduates. The myth of "early ripe, early rot" is clearly refuted by the outstanding success of each of these six young accelerants.

A follow-up study of Johns Hopkins University students who began college two or more years ahead of their age group examined their academic progress, ages at graduation, majors, course loads, grades, program length, and the progress of a special group of subjects identified through a study of mathematically precocious youth.

This article reviews events subsequent to a 1977 Julian Stanley speech on the topic of educational non-acceleration. It describes the evolution of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, focusing on program development,student identification through talent searches, criteria for student selection, and the need for additional funding.

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The article focuses on educational acceleration as one means of providing for gifted children. The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) is explained to allow for individual differences and to be resolutely interventional, longitudinal, and accelerative.

The study reports on a group of 25 educationally accelerated entrants to Johns Hopkins University. Findings support the ability of students who enter a highly selective college two to five years early to make good grades, win honors, and graduate promptly.

This paper describes longitudinal studies on three cohorts of students accelerated academically as part of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. Results do not support critics' contentions that acceleration produces academic gaps and early "burn out" but instead show positive psychosocial outcomes and high levels of participant satisfaction.

Identified by a study of mathematically precocious youth, 107 academically accelerated gifted students were compared with 107 nonacademically accelerated gifted students. At age 23-25 years, the two subject groups exhibited few significant differences, and no evidence of harmful effects of academic acceleration were found.

Survey results from cohorts of 511 and 222 gifted and accelerated students surveyed at ages 13, 18, and 23 years and a subset of 73 students indicate that students generally express positive feelings about acceleration. Nonintellectual personal attributes commonly used to select students for acceleration may be inappropriately used.

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The purpose was to investigate the long-term impact of the California State University, Sacramento Academic Talent Search Summer School (ATSSS) by means of a longitudinal follow-up of students at an interval of 4 years. A group of 100 academically talented middle school students (grades 7 through 9) were selected from the 350 participants in the ATSSS at California State University in 1984. Qualifications for the program were based on scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or equivalent test scores. During the summer, students studied fast-paced mathematics, writing, and/or Latin. Four years later, in 1988, a questionnaire was mailed to the selected students to determine their high school experiences. A response rate of 80% of the 100 locatable students gave a sample that compared favorably with the 1984 summer school group. Responses were analyzed descriptively using frequency distribution and cross-tabulation tables. Results indicate that: (1) program participants viewed the experience as highly positive; (2) academic acceleration through the program was associated with positive changes in school grades as indicated by grade point averages, interest in school and learning, and in students' abilities to get along with intellectual peers, age peers, and adults; (3) the program contributed to self-esteem and feelings of self-control; and (4) participants performed well in sports as well as academics. No pattern of social maladjustments or harmful results from the acceleration was found.

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Which children are grade accelerated in K–7 education? Have factors associated with grade acceleration changed over time? We examined personal, family, and school factors associated with three forms of grade acceleration (early entrance to kindergarten, early entrance to first grade, and grade skipping) using the NELS and ELS datasets. Other things being equal, females, Asian Americans, and students living on the U.S. east or west coast were more likely to be grade accelerated. When accelerated students were compared to older classmates of similar achievement who were not accelerated, accelerated students showed greater gains in achievement than nonaccelerated classmates during high school.

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