The Impact of NYC’s Gifted and Talented Program on Middle and High School Attendance and Achievement

• In Event: Cross-Agency Administrative Data Sets for Actionable Intelligence

Abstract

As national debates intensify over specialized admissions programs in K-12 education, policymakers continue to grapple with a pressing policy question: Do selective programs that require test scores for admission genuinely improve student outcomes, or would high-achieving students develop similarly in general education environments? This study addresses this critical policy question by examining the longitudinal effects of New York City's Gifted and Talented (G&T) program on student attendance and academic achievement.

Our research design capitalizes on the natural variation in when students enter the G&T program, allowing us to isolate causal effects while avoiding the methodological pitfalls that have plagued previous difference in difference studies. By employing the Callaway and Sant'Anna (CSA) estimator, we avoid the "bad comparison" problem inherent in traditional two-way fixed effects models, where newly treated units might be inappropriately compared to already-treated units (Callaway & Sant’Anna, 2021; Goodman-Bacon, 2021; Borusyak et al., 2024, Baker et al., 2022)

The findings reveal consistent and meaningful benefits of G&T participation. For attendance outcomes, we observe a reduction in absenteeism of approximately one day per year, with effects becoming more pronounced in later years. These attendance improvements persisted even during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting the program's resilience in maintaining student engagement during significant educational disruptions. For academic outcomes, our analysis shows sustained improvements in both English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. The most substantial gains appear among students who entered the G&T program in Grade 3, with effect sizes peaking at 0.154 standard deviations for ELA and 0.184 for math. These effects accumulate over time, with the largest improvements typically occurring two to four years after program entry- a critical period coinciding with middle school years. The robustness of our findings across different estimator and subgroups strengths the credibility of the conclusions (Gardner, 2022; Wooldridge, 2021; and Sun & Abraham, 2021).

This research contributes significantly to the ongoing policy debate about specialized educational programs. Our findings provide empirically robust evidence that, at least in the case of NYC's G&T program, there are tangible benefits to participation, particularly for students transitioning from general education settings. These results have important implications as districts nationwide grapple with resource allocation decisions, equity concerns, and the potential trade-offs of specialized programs. The costs of G&T programs, both financial resource and the potential classroom impacts of removing high-achieving peers from general education settings, must be weighed against the demonstrated benefits of improved attendance and academic performance (Baker & McIntire 2003; Argys et al., 1996). Our study is particularly timely given nationwide concerns about chronic absenteeism and a post-pandemic decline in academic growth (Kuhfeld et al., 2022; Fahle et al., 2023). In conclusion, this study makes both methodological and substantive contributions to our evaluation and understand of gifted education programs. The methodological advances in applying modern difference-in-differences techniques to educational policy research provide a template for future investigations, while the substantive findings offer evidence-based guidance for policymakers seeking to make informed decisions about specialized educational programming.

Author

• Katherine Jane Strickland, University of Florida
  Presenting Author