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By Anya Kamenetz

Chester E. Finn, Jr. has three very bright granddaughters. He thinks they “have considerable academic potential and are not always being challenged by their schools.” But Finn is not just a proud grandpa; he’s a long-established expert on education policy with the Fordham Institute and Hoover Institution.

So its not surprising that his grandkids got him wondering about — and researching — a big question: How well is the U.S. doing educating its top performers?

His answer: Not very. “High achievers are being neglected in all sort of ways by schools that had no incentive to push them farther up.”

His research became a book, with co-author Brandon Wright, out next month from Harvard University Press. It’s titled Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students. It contains an analysis of the U.S. issue, plus case studies on gifted education from a dozen countries around the world.

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