Talent Development in Rural Contexts: Predicting Reading Performance from Primary School Achievement, Creativity, and Motivation Institutional Repository Document

Rural students from economically disadvantaged households are identified as gifted at lower rates than their rural or suburban counterparts. To increase the number of students served, this study looked at how well early literacy scores and teacher assessments of student abilities in a rural, low socioeconomic district predicted third grade state reading scores. Results showed that prior achievement and teacher evaluations could predict about 50% of third grade state reading scores. Centered in the Talent Development in Achievement Domains framework (TAD; Preckel et al., 2020), these results provide a context for meeting the academic needs of rural students while illustrating that eventual student performance is not wholly predetermined when students enter school and that talent should be cultivated over time.