Teaching the Best and Brightest

Education researchers and school systems invest enormous sums in figuring out the best ways to teach students with learning disabilities. Students at the far upper end of the IQ scale tend to get much less attention. They're smart, they'll do okay anywhere, right?

No, actually they won't. It turns out that gifted students have about the same dropout rate that students with learning disabilities do, probably due to boredom. Sometimes they blossom when they reach schools like MIT or Stanford, where they find peers for the first time in their lives, but sometimes they never get that far. Time explains the lost potential these kids represent, and considers ways to keep them from falling through the cracks.