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Phantom menace: A look at the Right’s alarmist rhetoric about top students
- 10-17-2011
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By Ulrich Boser, Diana Epstein/Center for American Progress
When the Thomas B. Fordham Institute talks, people in the education policy community listen. The right-of-center think tank’s staff includes some of the most well-known names in the education community, including Checker Finn, who has authored more than 40 books on education reform over the past two decades. A few weeks ago, Fordham released a report that claimed that the nation’s efforts to close achievement gaps might be coming at the expense of our “talented tenth.” Those are students who score in the top 10 percent on standardized tests. And again folks listened. The New York Times held an online debate devoted to the question, “Are Top Students Getting Short Shrift?” In that forum, American Enterprise Institute scholar Rick Hess wrote that "we are shortchanging America's brightest students, and we're doing it reflexively and furtively." Fordham Institute’s Executive Vice President Mike Petrilli went so far as to claim in radio interviews that “today in our schools it’s considered elitist even to consider having gifted programs or honors programs.” (more...)
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