As California educators pore over the latest state testing scores, their overwhelming focus, appropriately, will be on students scoring below "proficient." Unfortunately, they will give virtually no thought to the 600,000 California elementary school students who scored "advanced." While school administrators will proudly tout these high scores, they will ignore the fact that most of these bright children will be stuck in classrooms that are completely inappropriate for them.

Many students scoring "advanced" on grade-level material could progress much further with instruction geared to their needs. Instead, with teachers pressured by the No Child Left Behind Act to aim instruction at below-proficiency students, advanced learners are forced to sit through repetitive rote lessons on material they long ago mastered. Frustrated and bored, many bright students will act up, tune out and, as research shows, eventually even drop out in alarming numbers. Ignoring these students shortchanges them and California's future.

Fortunately, California can radically improve our advanced students' education through two simple measures that are essentially cost-free. Our schools will not do so, however, unless education leaders – particularly state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell – have the political courage to reject the myths, wishful thinking and political correctness crippling the education of our bright students.

As a first step, O'Connell should have the courage to repudiate the politically correct wishful thinking that advanced students are appropriately challenged without being grouped by ability for instruction. Common sense and research confirm that students gifted in a particular subject learn far more when grouped by ability and provided an advanced curriculum in that subject. Yet in elementary schools, ability grouping – especially in math – is more the exception than the rule.

Most teachers well understand that high-ability students are short-changed by mixed-ability instruction. Nearly three-fourths of teachers surveyed in the recent Fordham Institute study, "High Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB," believe that advanced students are more likely to reach their academic potential in ability-grouped classes. Fully 76 percent said the country should rely more on ability-grouped classes so that advanced students "learn faster and in greater depth." Seventy-three percent declared "too often, the brightest students are bored and under-challenged in school" and are not being given "a sufficient chance to thrive."

Ability-grouping opponents nonetheless claim that teachers in mixed-ability classrooms adequately challenge advanced students through "differentiated instruction" – varying the depth, complexity and pacing of each lesson to appropriately instruct students of all abilities. Most teachers (and parents) know better than to believe this myth. Not only did 84 percent of teachers say that differentiated instruction is difficult to implement, but they also overwhelmingly acknowledged that advanced students are rarely offered instruction designed for their abilities.

O'Connell should come to grips with what teachers and well-established research conclude, and adopt policies that encourage California elementary schools to group high-ability students together for at least part of the day, and provide them with an advanced curriculum.

Next, O'Connell should correct the widespread misperception that advanced students are harmed by moving to a higher grade for one or more of their subjects. Many students gifted in particular subjects have mastered most of their grade-level curriculum before the school year even begins and desperately want more challenge. Accelerating them in these subjects is not only the single most effective curriculum intervention for these students, but it costs nothing – it merely moves students from one class to another.

As detailed in the seminal report, "A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students," accelerated students far outperform their non-accelerated age-mates academically, and many fare better socially and emotionally when removed from vastly under-challenging lessons, and placed with older peers.

Educators nonetheless routinely oppose acceleration, based primarily on outdated concerns about its social and emotional impacts. As gifted education expert James Borland notes, "I can think of no other issue in which there is such a gulf between what research has revealed and what most practitioners believe."

O'Connell can increase the use of acceleration through measures already successfully undertaken by other states. Recognizing that acceleration is "severely underutilized," Ohio has adopted a Model Student Acceleration Policy, and requires every school board to implement such a policy. O'Connell should follow suit.

Providing an appropriate education for advanced students does not require O'Connell to take his eye off the critical goal of better educating struggling students. This effort is not incompatible with implementing low-cost measures to meet the needs of advanced learners. As we work on raising the test scores of low-achieving students, California must not sacrifice the potential of our brightest young minds for the sake of political correctness.

Susan Goodkin is the executive director of the California Learning Strategies Center and a national author and lecturer on education issues. David G. Gold, a national lecturer and consultant on strategic issues in negotiation, writes on issues including education.