In New Orleans, a few hundred dollars could once help a family buy a “gifted” designation for their preschooler.

As an education reporter for the city’s Times-Picayune newspaper several years ago, I discovered that there was a two-tiered system for determining whether 3-year-olds met that mark, which, in New Orleans, entitled them to gifted-only prekindergarten programs at a few of the city’s most highly sought-after public schools.

Families could sit on a lengthy waitlist and have their children tested at the district central office for free. Or they could pay the money for the private test. In 2008, the year that I wrote about the issue, only a few of the more than 100 children tested at the central office were deemed gifted; but dozens of privately tested kiddos — nearly all of them tested by the same psychologist for $300 — met the benchmark.

Since working on that story, I’ve been interested in the use of intelligence testing for high-stakes decisions about educational access and opportunity — and the ways that money, insider knowledge and privilege can manipulate that process.

But I knew less about what the research shows about a broader question: Should gifted-only programming for the youngest students exist at all and, if so, what form should it take? When New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced in October that he would end long-standing gifted programming for kindergartners (while preserving it for the older grades), I reached out to some leading researchers in search of answers to those questions. Read the story.

More on gifted education

Hechinger reporter Jill Barshay, who covers education research, has written several stories about different facets of gifted education, which she captured in a column earlier this month.

In 2020, The Hechinger Report and NBC News produced a three-part series on the ways that gifted education has maintained segregation in American schools and efforts to diversify gifted classes. 

More early childhood news

Federal immigration agents pulled an infant teacher out of her classroom at a Chicago child care, pinning her arms behind her — and traumatizing the families who witnessed the incident, report Molly DeVore and Mack Liederman for Block Club Chicago.

Growing numbers of child care workers are running for elected office, hoping to work directly on behalf of change and more support for a sector that desperately needs it, writes Rebecca Gale for The 74. 

Colorado voters approved two sales tax levies to support child care providers and families with young children, reports Ann Schimke with Chalkbeat Colorado.

Research quick take

Contrary to perception, there’s little evidence that an increased academic focus in the early elementary years disadvantages boys, write researchers in a new working paper published by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute. The researchers, Megan Kuhfeld and Margaret Burchinal, examined growth in reading and math test scores for a sample of 12 million students at 22,000 schools between 2016 and 2025. They found that boys are surpassing girls in math by the end of elementary school, and that girls maintain an advantage in reading through fifth grade. 

This story about gifted testing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.