AAGT Board Member Homero Chavez Featured in The New York Times

AAGT is proud to celebrate our Board Member Homero Chavez, whose work in gifted education was recently highlighted in The New York Times article, “Why America’s Debate Over Which Children Are ‘Gifted’ Won’t Go Away.”

The feature examines the ongoing national conversation about how schools identify and support gifted students, and the inequities that often leave high-potential learners from underrepresented backgrounds without access to advanced opportunities.

In San Luis, Arizona, Homero has built a program that’s proving what’s possible when educators refuse to accept those limits. As the leader of the Gadsden Elementary School District’s early college program, he’s opened the doors of advanced learning to hundreds of students, enrolling fourth through eighth graders in advanced math and even community college courses for credit.

His belief is simple but transformative: “Gifted education is traditionally only for a handful… We want to break away from that. We don’t shut the door to kids who want to try.” That philosophy has changed lives – like the fifth grader who once felt defeated after not scoring high enough on a gifted test, only to go on to earn a biomedical engineering degree from an Ivy League university.

Homero’s work is a model for what equitable gifted education can look like in Arizona and beyond. His story is a reminder that talent is universal, but opportunity is not, and that changing that reality takes vision, commitment, and heart.

Read the full article on The New York Times website here.