A Nation Empowered, Volume 2

Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students

Susan G. Assouline, Nicholas Colangelo, Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Ann Lupkowski-Shoplik, Susan G. Assouline, Nicholas Colangelo, Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Ann Lupkowski-Shoplik

• Publisher: Belin Blank
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780996160308
• eBook ISBN: 9780996160322
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This new report, A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students builds on the momentum of the 2004 report, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students. A Nation Deceived initiated a critical dialogue about academic acceleration, an under-used intervention. A Nation Deceived exposed to the nation the inconsistencies between research and practice and brought acceleration to prominence in the field.

Volume 1 and 2 of A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students equips students, families, and educators with facts to refute biased excuses. A Nation Empowered shifts the impetus from conversation to action. Empowerement  galvanizes determination with evidence. Volume 1 portrays the determination of students, educators, and parents to strive for excellence. Volume 2 reveals the evidence that trumps the excuses that hold bright students back.
 

Special Issues in Acceleration

Chapter 13

Early to Rise: The Effects of Acceleration on Occupational Prestige, Earnings, and Satisfaction

Katie Larsen McClarty
Center for College & Career Success, Pearson, Austin, Texas

ABSTRACT

Research consistently supports the benefits of acceleration for school-age students including advanced academic achievement and more frequent graduate degree attainment. This chapter extends the discussions that are typically grounded in academic (K-graduate school) environments by presenting an analysis of a longitudinal data set that investigates whether the advantages associated with academic acceleration persist into the workplace (i.e., careers). In other words, do the benefits persist in an environment beyond typical schooling and degree attainment?aThis chapter considers two mechanisms by which acceleration may affect career outcomes: precocity (i.e., early career entrance) and productivity rates. The data analyses in this chapter speak only to the second mechanism (through comparison with older peers). Support for the first mechanism comes from the prior research (comparison with same-age peers). Prior research shows that accelerated students, who enter the workforce earlier than same-age, same-ability peers, are more successful. Original data analyses in this chapter demonstrate that, in their careers, accelerated students also have advantages over older peers–similar-ability, non-accelerated individuals who started their careers at the same time.

Accelerated students are more successful, have higher productivity rates, more prestigious occupations and they earn more and increase their income faster compared to older, similar-ability, non-accelerated peers. Therefore, acceleration provides both short-term (within educational settings) and long-term (workplace settings) benefits. Implications for educators and counselors are discussed including how acceleration as an intervention may impact initial career decisions as well as subsequent career outcomes.

INTRODUCTION

The early bird catches the worm. This common idiom expresses the idea that the best opportunities are available to those who seek them first. This philosophy has been used to support acceleration—allowing gifted and talented students to complete their schooling in fewer years—thereby allowing them to rapidly enter the workforce and make substantial intellectual contributions (Pressey, 1946; Terman, 1957). Indeed, accelerated students do enter the workforce and achieve success earlier than their non-accelerated, same-age and same-ability peers (Janos, 1987; Park, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2013). These facts are important, but not surprising. It seems intuitive that accelerated students make earlier and larger contributions when they are being compared with students of similar ability who have had less time (because they were not accelerated) to do big things. In this respect, we know accelerated students have an advantage. What we do not know, however, is whether accelerated students have an advantage over older students of the same ability who complete school at the same time and compete in the same job market.

The second mouse gets the cheese. This idiom strikes a more cautionary tone. Could acceleration mean “too much, too soon,” and therefore be too risky as an intervention? Might accelerated students be disadvantaged because they skipped critical elements of schooling? That is the focus of this chapter: evaluating the impact of acceleration on career outcomes by comparing accelerated students with their same-ability, older classmates. The following sections will first review literature on gifted and talented career development including the effects of acceleration on career outcomes, and then present results of an original research study.

CAREER OUTCOMES FOR GIFTED AND TALENTED STUDENTS

Although much research is devoted to identifying and serving gifted and talented children with the goal of maximizing their potential and producing eminent adults (Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2011), fewer research studies focus on the career accomplishments of gifted individuals and their developmental trajectories. As Jung (2012) notes, careers are where most gifted children will have “the opportunity to translate their exceptional abilities into significant achievements that advance knowledge and/or affect the lives of others in society” (p. 189). In fact, the advancement of knowledge and society has been one of the undercurrents of gifted education programs. For example, after the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, America began placing great emphasis on cultivating talent, helping gifted students fulfill their potential, and being globally competitive (Tannenbaum, 1979).

We should take care, however, not to equate exceptional potential or opportunities with a societal obligation to develop those gifts and talents and apply them directly to a chosen career (Hoyt, 1974). Meeting the expectations of others is one of the challenges gifted children face in making career choices (Emmett & Minor, 1993; Wood, 2009). Some research has indicated that gifted individuals feel they need to enter careers to please others rather than to satisfy their own interests and values (Hagan, 1982). Other important considerations in gifted students’ career development include multipotentiality, perfectionism, early career maturity, and lengthy educational training.

Multipotentiality is defined as the ability to choose between a number of possible career outcomes due to high general abilities, interests, motivations, and opportunities (Rysiew, Shore, & Leeb, 1999). Many gifted children perform at advanced levels in multiple areas, which can make narrowing career options difficult. On traditional ability assessments and career interest inventories, when compared to other students at their age- or grade-level, they may show a “high-flat” profile, indicating potential in multiple areas with no differentiation of strengths and weaknesses (Sanborn, 1979). However, when above-level tests (see Olszewski-Kubilius, this volume) are used, many fewer students fit a traditional multipotential profile. In a study of gifted teenagers, slightly more than half had flat ability profiles using above-level testing, and fewer than five percent had flat profiles when also considering interests and values (Achter, Lubinski, & Benbow, 1996).

Another career challenge for gifted students may lie in a tendency toward perfectionism. This can manifest as an inability to make the “perfect” career choice, with students wanting a career that will both provide a sense of accomplishment and make a difference in society (Emmett & Minor, 1993). The pressure to find the perfect job may result in delayed career decisions or frequent college major changes (Greene, 2003).

Despite challenges in selecting the “right” career, or perhaps because of a desire to select the “right” career, gifted students start career exploration earlier than other students (Kelly & Cobb, 1991). They have more career-related information and in some instances are more certain of their career choices than similar-aged peers (Kelly & Colangelo, 1990; Stewart, 1999). When career choices are made, gifted students tend to choose careers requiring ten or more years of postsecondary training (Stewart, 1999). They obtain more postsecondary degrees and make significant contributions as adults (Kell, Lubinski, & Benbow 2013; Subotnik, Karp, & Morgan, 1989; Terman & Oden, 1959). Gifted students tend to enter management or professional occupations, hold positions of leadership, and produce an abundance of creative or scholarly works.

Although many gifted children are successful, the direct link between IQ or school achievement and outstanding career accomplishments is weak (Milgram & Hong, 1999). Some suggest intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Students need to possess a minimum level of general aptitude, but beyond that there are many more factors that influence ultimate adult achievement, including persistence, task commitment, mentors, and educational or training opportunities (Beck, 1989; Cox, 1926; Perrone, 1997; Renzulli, 1978; Simonton, 1997; Subotnik et al., 2011). This chapter is devoted to one particular educational intervention–acceleration–and its effects on career outcomes for gifted students.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

One way acceleration impacts career outcomes is by shortening time spent in formal education, allowing students to enter the workforce earlier. Career outcomes are also influenced by other mechanisms such as retirement age and productivity rate. The relationship between those factors is represented by Equation 1 (Simonton, 1988):

O = R(L–P) (1)

where O is lifetime career output, R is average output rate, L is age at career end (or longevity), and P is age at career start (or precocity). Career output is a function of rate and time, where time spent in the workforce is represented by L–P. Acceleration should reduce P, which, all else equal, will theoretically increase O. Equation 1 therefore provides a framework for studying the long-term effects of acceleration on career outcomes.

PRECOCITY

Long-term acceleration effects are studied infrequently because longitudinal student tracking is time-and resource-intensive. Nonetheless, three studies following gifted and talented children for 20 years or more have examined acceleration’s effects on career outcomes. The oldest, Lewis Terman’s Genetic Studies of Genius, began in 1921 at Stanford University (Terman, 1925). When Terman’s 19 youngest participants (by age at college entry) were compared at age 24 with non-accelerated, similar age and IQ peers, the accelerated men were more likely to work in professional sectors (e.g., professor, physician, engineer), and less likely to hold service-sector jobs or still be in school (Janos, 1987).¹ In addition, when program administrators identified the 150 most successful men, the accelerated students were identified more often than their IQ-matched, same-age peers. These results support the notion that acceleration permits early entry into the workforce and provides opportunities to make an early impact. Accelerated students could start work earlier because they were more than three and a half years younger than IQ-matched peers, on average, at college graduation. Moreover, accelerated students who earned advanced degrees were, on average, one and a half years younger than IQ-matched non-accelerated peers. Therefore, when accomplishments were evaluated in 1940 (constant L), accelerated students (reduced P) had spent less time in school and more time in the workforce than their same-age and ability peers and were rated as more successful (increased O).

More recent longitudinal analyses yield similar results. The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) started in 1971 at Johns Hopkins University under the direction of Julian C. Stanley (Stanley, 1996). SMPY students were identified before age 13 via talent searches (see Olszewski-Kubilius, this volume) based on their top performance on quantitative or verbal reasoning assessments. Twenty years later, accelerated SMPY students (see Wai, this volume) reflected positively on their experiences. Skipping ahead, they reported, benefited both their education and their career planning (Benbow, Lubinski, Shea, & Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000). The students’ outcomes support their self reports; by age 50, accelerated students attained more doctoral degrees than similar non-accelerated peers (Park et al., 2013). They also were more likely to have made significant contributions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Accelerated students authored their first STEM publications earlier and amassed more highly cited and total publications than non-accelerated professional peers.² Though accelerated students began their careers earlier, they were just as satisfied as non-accelerated students with their career direction at age 50 (Smeets, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2014), a finding that would suggest no negative consequences to being accelerated.

The results from SMPY reinforce the theory that acceleration propels students more quickly into the workforce and thereby allows them to accomplish more, faster. For example, SMPY students who skipped a grade were a year and a half younger, on average, when they earned their Ph.D.s, which allowed them to enter the workforce earlier (Park et al., 2013). Even if the two groups had similar productivity rates (R), Equation 1 suggests accelerated students would have greater career output because they had more time in the workforce.

International studies echo these conclusions. Gross’s (2006) 20-year follow-up of 60 Australian students with IQs above 160, found that students who accelerated two or more years were more likely to earn graduate degrees and enter professional careers. In sum, accelerated students start their careers earlier, providing them an advantage in career length that leads to greater output and achievement.

PRODUCTIVITY RATE

Accelerated students may also benefit from a second mechanism–productivity rate. Accelerated and non-accelerated students may differ in their productivity rate (R) because productivity rate tends to be correlated with precocity (Dietz & Bozeman, 2005; Simonton, 1988). To test this hypothesis, career length must be held constant. One option for holding career length constant is to collect outcomes from non-accelerated students a few years after the accelerated students so both groups have the same time in the workforce. However, because career outcomes can be influenced by cohort effects or competition from contemporaries in the field (Dennis, 1958), the timing of career start and end should also be controlled. A better approach, then, is to compare same-ability, accelerated and non-accelerated students who complete their education at the same time, thus holding career start and career length constant, even though students’ ages differ. This is the approach presented in this chapter.

The analyses that follow are organized around one central research question: How do accelerated students’ productivity rates and career outcomes compare with same-ability, non-accelerated peers when career length is held constant? Specifically, students who skipped at least one grade in elementary or middle school were compared with their older, similarly achieving, non-accelerated classmates eight years after high school exit on three outcomes: occupational prestige, earnings, and job satisfaction.

METHODS

DATA

This research relies on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88; U.S. Department of Education, 2000). NELS:88 provides a longitudinal source for studying the impact of acceleration on later-life outcomes, and it is distinct from both Terman’s and SMPY’s longitudinal datasets because the data are nationally representative and more recent. NELS:88 students graduated high school in 1992, many of Terman’s students graduated in the 1930s, and most SMPY students from the Park et al. (2013) SMPY longitudinal study graduated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Whereas Terman’s sample was focused on students in California identified first through teacher nomination and the SMPY sample draws from students who elected to participate in a national talent search program, the NELS:88 dataset contains a sample of U.S. students representative of the full population. NELS:88 was not designed to focus on advanced learners; both high- and low-ability students are included. The data therefore provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of acceleration wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• General Topics
• Applications of Acceleration
• Special Issues in Acceleration
• Appendices