I’m making my Education Week debut this week with a column, co-written with education writer (and former USA Today colleague) Richard Whitmire. The column, called “An easy (but seldom used) way to accommodate gifted children” is in the print Education Week edition, plus online (via subscription) at the EW website, and then in it’s entirety at EdNews.org.

The gist? In tough times, gifted education looks like a tempting target for budget cuts. But one of the best ways to accommodate gifted children — grade or subject matter skipping, aka “acceleration” — is incredibly cheap, and often saves taxpayers money. Given that studies have found it to be effective (and not socially problematic) we just don’t know why it isn’t used more often.