The present study expanded our current understanding of leadership among academically gifted seventh-grade students by examining peer-identified leaders of naturally occurring social groups in a mixed ability setting. Three consecutive cohorts of seventh-grade students (N = 474; 57% female; 43% European American) attending a public magnet…

Research suggests that academically gifted students are often underserved when it comes to the school setting. Academically gifted students require specialized instruction to challenge them. Several successful strategies exist for creating an educational environment that appropriately challenges and helps these students achieve academic growth;…

Peer status is an important indicator and predictor of adjustment. While gifted children tend to enjoy favorable peer status, their social functioning during adolescence is less clear. The current study seeks to enhance this understanding by examining both preference- and reputation-based peer status of gifted adolescents. Peer nominations were…

Reading comprehension growth trajectories from 3rd to 7th grade were estimated for 99,919 students on a state reading comprehension assessment. We examined whether differences between students in general education (GE) and groups of students identified as exceptional learners were best characterized as stable, widening, or narrowing. The groups…

Purpose: In an era of unprecedented student measurement and emphasis on data-driven educational decision making, the full potential for using data to target resources to students has yet to be realized. This study explores the utility of machine-learning techniques with large-scale administrative data to identify student dropout risk. Research…

Gifted underachievement represents a frustrating loss of potential for society. Although attempts have been made to develop interventions to reverse gifted underachievement, the theoretical underpinnings of these interventions have yet to be empirically validated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of the…

The central research question is the extent to which gifted programming effects student academic outcomes of gifted as compared to not-gifted students and how this differs by race/ethnicity and/or poverty status. Since the identification of elementary school students as gifted is not random, propensity score matching is used to remove this bias in…

The researcher's purpose in the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an Accelerated Mathematics Program (AMPS) for sixth and seventh grades, using the accelerative practice of curriculum telescoping in a rural school district in North Carolina. The mathematics achievement of students served in the locally developed Accelerated Mathematics…

Dropping out of school has been presented as a serious problem affecting gifted students, with some authors suggesting that 20% or more of dropouts could be gifted (e.g., Rimm, 1995; Robertson, 1991). Longitudinal data from North Carolina were used to investigate high-school dropout rates among gifted students (N = 7916) who had participated in a…