As documented in this special issue, all over the world hard choices must be made in education, government, business, and medicine. Intelligence tests, used intelligently and with appropriate ethical safeguards, are one tool of many that help make hard choices work out well, or at least better than the next-best alternative (Kaufman, Raiford,…

The old myth about the ability and variability of potential in children is a comforting myth, for those who are uneasy with the degree of inequality they see and would rather seek to justify it than confront it. The myth of inherent potential helps some explain to themselves why they are privileged. Extend the myth to believe in inherited ability…

Among some gifted education researchers, advocates, and practitioners, it is sometimes believed that there is a larger number of gifted people in the general population than would be predicted from a normal distribution (e.g., Gallagher, 2008; N. M. Robinson, Zigler, & Gallagher, 2000; Silverman, 1995, 2009), a belief that we termed the…