Promoting Achievement in Gifted and Talented Children:
Is Homogeneous or Heterogeneous Grouping Better?
For years there has been ongoing controversy concerning the best kinds of programs for gifted and talented children. There is no single right answer. A great deal depends upon the nature of the children, their specific types of giftedness, and the needs and resources of the school and community. Philosophical arguments continue concerning the relative advantages and disadvantages of homogeneous or heterogeneous grouping of gifted children, and it is the purpose of this paper to carefully examine those various viewpoints and arrive at some logical conclusions and recommendations regarding the best approach to promote achievement in gifted and talented children.
Some educators feel that gifted children cannot get an education that will nurture their gifts, suit their learning style, and be sufficiently stimulating unless they are totally segregated. These educators believe that regular classroom teachers are untrained in teaching for the talented and merely give the gifted students extra homework while paying lip-service to enrichment (NSPRA, 1979, p. 66). If one views achievement strictly in terms of academic advancement measurable by test scores, then separate, exclusive programs may be viable.
Hunter College Elementary School in New York and the highly competitive gifted high schools in New York would espouse this theory of separate, highly achievement-oriented schools for the talented children. Masterman School in Philadelphia has a special program for 1,000 gifted and talented children from grades five through high school who have the top achievement scores throughout the district. Some states offer governors' schools and exclusive summer programs as examples of segregated, enriched planning.
The director of Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Annemarie Roeper says, "There are people who are concer...