Effectiveness of a “Grass Roots” Statewide Enrichment Program for Gifted Elementary School Children

Abstract

Enrichment programs provide learning opportunities for a broader or deeper examination of curricular or extracurricular topics and are popular in gifted education. Herein, we investigated the effectiveness of a statewide extracurricular enrichment program for gifted elementary school children in Germany. The program implemented a ”grass roots“ strategy by which local units developed and offered the enrichment courses, which spanned a broad array of topics. The courses targeted different outcomes, including students' cognitive abilities, school achievement, interests, creativity, self-control, self-concept, and social competencies. We compared third-grade students attending the enrichment program (N =423) with nonattending third-grade students (N = 2,328) by means of a propensity score analysis. Specifically, we controlled for potential selection effects and estimated the average causal effect of the enrichment program for children attending the program. The findings revealed positive program effects on academic achievement but not on the other targeted outcomes.