The History of Gifted Education
Submitted for publication in
The Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Foundations of Education
Roxanne Greitz Miller, Ed.D.
Chapman University, Orange, California
Gifted education in America has waxed and waned in its presence and prominence over
the past two hundred years. During the early years of the American public school system, gifted
education programs were notably absent. Through the early 1800’s, philosophical and
behaviorist theories that one could be molded entirely based on controlled experiences were
supported by the democratic ideal that all men are created equal, and provided a strong basis
upon which gifted education was deemed unwarranted.
Around 1850, scholars began to talk about the gifted or academically talented child. It
was then thought that a very thin line separated genius and insanity, and the psychology of the
gifted child provided the impetus for further study. Sir Francis Galton performed the first
scientific study of giftedness in the late 1800's, ranking subjects based on their percentile
intelligence score compared to the general population, thus, furnishing the first comprehensive
description of the gifted.
In 1861, William Torrey Harris, then Superintendent of Schools in St. Louis, Missouri,
established the first acceleration program for gifted students based on the concept of flexible
promotions wherein students could be promoted to the next grade level after either a year,
semester, quarter, or five week time period. However, this program did not give any
consideration to a gifted child’s social needs.
From 1880 to 1900, the first homogeneously grouped gifted programs began. These
programs provided advanced academic studies and social interaction between gifted students;
however, such programs for the gifted were limited. The general belief among educators was
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that the gifted child should remain in the heterogeneous classroom, with the teacher making
appropriate modifications for the student in the regular curriculum.
Gifted programs expanded to include special schools for the gifted with accelerated
academic programs in the early 1900's. Whether grouped in a special class or school,
homogeneous grouping of gifted students was proposed as a major step toward making education
of the gifted (and all students) more efficient; this same rationale continues to be used today in
justifying homogeneous grouping of gifted students.
During the 1920's, the Binet-Simon intelligence test was first used to study large groups
of gifted children. At Stanford University, Lewis M. Terman supervised the modification of the
original Binet-Simon test into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, and then used the test to
identify over 1500 gifted children and performed extensive field studies on these children
throughout their lives. The advent of a quantifiable measuring device for identifying gifted
children was crucial to the continuation and refinement of gifted education programs. Gifted
education programs in the 1920’s were generally enrichment programs where traditional
curriculum was expanded upon in various ways. The influence of William H. Kilpatrick's
project method developed during this time period likely aided in influencing this shift from
acceleration to enrichment orientation.
Although a few gifted education programs continued and flourished during the 1930's
and 1940's, in general, neither gifted nor mentally retarded programs received widespread
attention during this time. A 1931 White House conference report stated that while 1.5 million
children with I.Q.'s greater than 120 had been identified in the United States, less than one
percent of those children were enrolled in special classes. Of the students who were enrolled in
special classes, the primary method of instruction used was still homogeneous grouping with less
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emphasis on acceleration than in the early 1900's.
With the end of World War II and the rise of technological careers in the United States,
gifted education gained attention. In 1950, the National Education Association Educational
Policies Commission produced a report entitled Education of the Gifted, in which a conservative
increase in attention to the needs of and opportunities for gifted children was suggested, but
special classes and homogeneous grouping of gifted children was not recommended.
In the early 1950's the concept of giftedness was expanded to include talented youth.
Talent could be expressed artistically, musically, with spatial relationships, mental reasoning,
and other facets of intelligence not normally measured in I.Q. evaluations. Established in 1953,
the Talented Youth Project at the Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute of School Experimentation in
New York City was one of the first programs to study the various aspects of talented youth.
The gifted education movement came to the forefront of American public schooling with
the launching of the Russian rocket Sputnik in 1957; better education of the gifted was seen as a
means to protect national security. The American government responded to the national
educational crisis with the establishment of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in
1958. Through NDEA, funding was allocated for counselors to work with gifted children, and
for educational experiments on gifted children to be performed. In addition to the funding of
gifted programs, individual students now were able to receive funding for post-secondary
education, particularly in technological areas. The National Merit Scholarship program was
begun; the National Science Foundation provided numerous scholarships to students studying
science in college; and the Advanced Placement Program was established.
In the early 1960's, concentrated study into creativity in education and the creative
abilities of students began. E. Paul Torrance’s research showed gifted children in special classes
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had more confidence in their ability to be creative than gifted children of comparable ability in
regular classes. Torrance's Test of Creativity would later be used to identify children for gifted
education programs. The emphasis in gifted teacher education classes at the time was on how to
develop powers of creative thinking in gifted students.
The civil rights movement and President Johnson's war on poverty in the 1960’s shifted
the nation's attention the economically and socially disadvantaged, and precipitated efforts to
identify gifted students from minority and low socioeconomic populations. The gifted
curriculum programs of the sixties included four categories of curriculum differentiation: (1)
acceleration, the presentation of older age material; (2) enrichment, characterized by extra work
and extra resources; (3) sophistication, learning more from the same curriculum; and (4) novelty,
interdisciplinary or unique classes.
In 1970, "Provisions Related to Gifted and Talented Children" (Section 806) was added
to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Amendments of 1969, enabling federal funds to
be used on gifted education. The provisions also directed the United States Commissioner of
Education to study the extent to which special education provisions are necessary for the gifted
and talented, whether federal programs currently established are meeting their needs, and how
federal programs could be more effective.
Public Law 94-142’s passage in 1975 required that every American child be provided
with a "free appropriate public education." Since then, gifted education has been recognized as a
part of special (or exceptional) education. As such, students who display characteristics of
giftedness are often referred for psychological evaluation and intelligence testing under the
identification procedures used for special education students.
The first Gifted and Talented Children's Education Act in 1978 authorized between $25
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and $50 million to be spent on gifted education programs. Repealed by President Reagan as a
part of his platform of "new federalism," gifted education spending policies were returned to the
states, where they continue to reside today with states implementing a wide variety of funding
formulae for gifted education programs.
The gifted curriculum programs of the 1970’s emphasized mastery of thinking skills
underlying productive and creative thinking. The previously described methods of curriculum
differentiation were also used throughout the decade and into the 1980's, with novelty and
enrichment overshadowing the other methods.
In 1983, the publication of A Nation At Risk caused gifted education to receive attention
once again because of a perceived threat to the superior status of the United States over other
countries. Gifted education programs resumed their emphasis on academic acceleration and
sophistication, with renewed attention to math and science. While teaching of creative thinking
continued, the use of creativity in problem solving was emphasized.
In 1989, President George Bush and the governors of the United States signed Education
2000, a reform effort to increase the cognitive abilities of American students. In 1993, the
United States Department of Education released its first study on the gifted in two decades, in
which differential education for gifted was favored and greater efforts to identify the gifted and
talented from minority groups urged. However, since the enactment of No Child Left Behind
under President George W. Bush, students who are underperforming receive the majority of
resources and gifted funding and existence of programs has been reduced significantly, helping
to reestablish the previously held belief that education of the gifted is unnecessary.
In those states and districts that continue to provide gifted programs, all of the categories
of curriculum differentiation can be found. Not only do gifted education programs and funding
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vary widely from state to state, but they frequently vary within states as well. Programs are
provided in a variety of school settings; part-time pullout programs, full-time gifted education
centers, special summer academies, magnet schools, regular schools that provide gifted classes,
and even the traditional heterogeneous classroom.
Roxanne Greitz Miller
Chapman University, Orange, California
See also Policy Issues in Gifted Education
Further Readings and References
Colangelo, N., & Davis, G.A. (2002). Handbook of Gfited Education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Miller, R.G. (1997). Gifted selection criteria and performance in sixth grade gifted science.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Florida International University.
Rickover, H.G. (1959). Education and Freedom. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company.
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