The analysis of more than 9000 children looked at whether strong growth in early receptive vocabulary led to greater progress in reading comprehension as students advanced through school, finding those four-year-olds with the strongest vocabulary showed less growth in later years.
Led by Dr Sally Larsen from University of New England and Dr Florina Erbeli from Texas A&M University, the research suggests that more challenging instruction is needed for higher achieving students, who showed slower progress in reading despite initially displaying stronger skills.
Commenting on the findings, gifted education specialist Dr Kate Barton notes the data does not support evidence of the Matthew Effect – a widening gap between low and high achievers.
“Rather low achievers catch up whilst high ability children hit a ceiling and do not extend their initial advantage,” she writes in a Substack post.
This is ‘really surprising’, she flags, given the vast historical literature that demonstrates the importance of early vocabulary knowledge for reading comprehension.
The Australian study draws stark parallels with four others out of the US, Barton says.
A 2015 study found that advanced readers progressed the least of any group in Grades K-2, dropping from the 97th percentile in Kindergarten to the 81st by Grade 2.
Meanwhile, research from 2011 that tracked high-performing students from more than 1500 American schools found some 44 per cent of students who scored in the 90th percentile or above in reading fell out of the top tier by Year 8.
As gifted and twice-exceptional specialist Sheyanne Smith notes on LinkedIn, this cohort were not “struggling,” but “they were no longer visible as needing more”.
A 2025 study has confirmed the pattern remains, Smith adds, which found that the percentage of US students at the advanced reading level on NAEP has declined nationally.
“A fourth study adds another dimension. Using assessment data from approximately 220,000 students across 10 states, [research from 2022] found that in reading, advanced students grew just as much over the summer as they did during the school year, suggesting that for these students, school was not adding growth beyond what they were experiencing outside of the classroom,” Smith notes.
“Four studies. Four data sets. A similar pattern. Advanced readers are not growing the way we assume, and when they aren’t challenged, there are predictable consequences.”
Students who are ready to read beyond proficiency deserve explicit instruction, support, and the chance to grow – just like their peers, the expert argues.
“Becoming a deep, meaningful reader doesn’t happen by accident. It has to be developed. When students appear to be doing well, it’s easy to assume they’re fine and that they don’t need more. The research tells a different story.”
For years experts have been warning that gifted and high potential students are getting a raw deal in Australian schools, calling out what they see as a continued systemic neglect of their unique learning needs.
For one, Dr Michelle Ronksley-Pavia, an expert in giftedness and twice-exceptionality from Griffith University, has criticised the lack of Federal Government direction for supporting gifted students or for tapping into their potential.
“Where policies do exist at state and territory levels, they often languish on websites but are not implemented or ‘enforced’, or surprisingly are removed altogether and subsumed in inclusive education policies that lack specific direction for schools in supporting these learners,” she told EducationHQ previously.
The academic said she was frequently approached by schools who “recognise that their high potential and gifted students are languishing, disengaged in classrooms across the country”.
“These schools recognise they need to be doing better for these students but lack the skill or training to be able to nurture this potential,” she added.
Other research has found that children withdrawn from class to attend acceleration programs are handed generic worksheets and face disinterest from their core teachers and classmates.
According to Barton, education policy in Australia has a strong focus on supporting struggling learners, with interventions with students with a learning disability a priority.
“I am wholly supportive of assistance for students at both ends of the bell curve. However, in schools with a single staff position responsible for ‘Inclusion”, it is no surprise that their time and resources will be spent on meeting compliance requirements where legislation demands it (such as NCCD in NSW and the federal Disability Discrimination Act) at the expense of time for gifted and high potential students, where there is no such legal framework,” she writes.
And while teachers are required to differentiate their teaching for students who both struggle and excel, this is often lacking, Barton argues.
“Teachers may not have the knowledge, capacity or inclination to adapt teaching for high ability students, so high achievers hit a ceiling in their learning with little enrichment or acceleration.
“Entering the classroom with an advantage and leaving it with hindered growth prompts the question of who our schools are designed to serve.”
In the context of reading instruction, when this typically targets ‘the middle’ high ability readers are disadvantaged, Barton suggests.
“…[they] must participate in phonics they have already mastered, listen to texts offering no novel vocabulary and read materials that are too basic.
“They not only miss the instruction their peers benefit from, but they lose heart in school. When motivation wanes, disengagement creeps in and development of learning skills grinds to a halt.”
Larsen and Erbeli conclude that while early years classrooms in Australia may already be structured to effectively support those students with weaker vocabulary skills, higher-achieving students are in need of more challenging instruction.
“The challenge for Australian schools, therefore, is designing curricula and instruction that promote both sustained progress for lower-achieving students and also support higher-achieving students,” their paper urges.
Barton advocates the need for moving beyond standard reading benchmarks and implementing “deliberate, advanced literacy strategies that keep gifted learners genuinely stretched from the outset of school”.
“Until we intentionally tailor curricula to challenge high-ability minds, school will be less of a launchpad for gifted readers and more of an unintended anchor,” she warns.
