Jonathan Wai

This paper investigates the relationship between funding for gifted and talented (G/T) programs and short-term academic growth of G/T students as well as predictors of G/T growth and G/T costs. Using district finance data in Arkansas from the 2017–2018 through 2022–2023 fiscal years (with the exception of 1 year due to COVID-19), we employed multiple modeling approaches to assess whether the findings were robust rather than statistical artifacts. Across 5 years of data, findings indicated no statistically significant association between G/T expenditure and changes in test scores. School districts with a higher proportion of G/T students or non-White students tended to have lower test scores and spent less per G/T student, underscoring that funding disparities across districts may play a role in limiting G/T growth outcomes. These findings add to the literature on G/T and education finance as well as add novel considerations to policy discussions surrounding G/T funding and its allocation.

This study draws from two cohorts of students (total N = 10,508) to examine cognitive ability and achievement inequality around the COVID-19 pandemic. Before and after the pandemic, two groups of Arkansas students were given both the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT), which is considered more of an ability or reasoning measure, and the ACT-Aspire, which is considered more of an achievement measure. We use a quantile regression framework to examine possible distributional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results demonstrate that the cognitive ability and/or achievement gaps did not widen after the pandemic, instead they stayed stable or narrowed moderately across groups. Results also indicate that cognitive ability was a significant and consistent predictor of achievement before COVID-19, but the strength of this relationship attenuated noticeably after the pandemic. This work helps add to the literature on COVID learning changes (large losses for many students), drawing from a large database of students in one state.

This chapter reviews a model for educating and counseling academically talented youth developed by research from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). The model focuses on aligning the personal characteristics of students with matching educational opportunities to facilitate appropriate developmental placement. This can, in turn, lead to greater educational, occupational, and creative success for these students.

Childhood experiences and activities, including sports, videogames, and toys, have long been of interest in understanding cognitive development and later individual differences. In particular, the malleability of spatial reasoning suggests that early experiences, including a variety of spatial activities, may have a significant impact on the development of students’ spatial ability skills. In the present study, we sought to update the most widely used spatial activity survey and propose a survey of videogame usage. Both surveys were administered to a large sample of adults with children aged 7 to 14, with a sample (N = 1210) diverse in race, ethnicity, and gender. We explored the survey’s descriptives, scale design, and factor structure to support future use.

We identify a rise in educational polarization among members of the US Congress mirroring the educational polarization in the American mass public. Over the past half-century, the percentage of Republican representatives who attended elite educational institutions declined from 40% to 15%, and the percentage of similarly educated Republican senators declined from 55% to 35%, while the ranks of elite-educated Democrats rose in both chambers. These changes across the parties have mapped into observable differences in behavior and approaches toward lawmaking. We find that elite-educated legislators are much more liberal in their voting patterns, suggesting a link between the decline in elite-educated Republicans and ideological polarization in Congress. We also demonstrate that, in the House, elite-educated Democrats are especially effective lawmakers, but not so for elite-educated Republicans. In the Senate, we establish a link between the decline of elite-educated Republicans and the rise of partisan warrior “Gingrich Senators.” Overall, these patterns offer initial glimpses into how political elites are being drawn from different educational cohorts, representing an important transition in American governance.

This study adds to the understanding of academic and long-term outcomes among individuals enrolled in gifted and talented (G/T) programs. Specifically, we explore postsecondary college enrollment rates and selectivity trends of G/T students in a Southern state. Using multilevel modeling, we analyzed a sample of 184,515 observations from the 2014–2019 academic years, merging data from the state Department of Education and the National Student Clearinghouse. We found that G/T students, overall, were more likely (odds ratio [OR] = 1.97) to attend any postsecondary institution than typically developing students. G/T students, compared with their typically developing peers, were 65% more likely to attend selective postsecondary institutions. These findings add to the college outcomes literature on G/T students as well as add to policy discussions surrounding higher education access for students in the heartland.

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Spatial thinking permeates much of our lives and is an asset when solving problems involving well-structured visual information or imagining solutions in physical or digital space. However, an estimated three million US school children have spatial talents that go unrecognized because of the tools commonly used for identification of academic talent. For decades, educational and psychological research has explored the range of spatial thinking skills that are demanded by many career fields, including science, engineering, and mathematics. Spatial thinking has been found to be particularly important to early mathematical thinking. In this article, we explore what spatial thinking entails, where it is important in the curriculum, and how we can begin to develop spatial literacy and identify spatial talents in our K-12 classrooms.