Gifted underachievement: What if it goes unnoticed?

When we think about underachievement, we often picture a student whose grades are slipping, who leaves work unfinished, or who has visibly checked out. But what if a child seems to be doing just fine? Gets good grades. Works quietly. Does what the teacher asks. Causes no problems. Maybe is even seen as a pleasant, independent, model student. Yet at home, getting them out the door for school each morning is often a struggle. I recognize that situation from my own family. My children do well at school and can look like model students in the classroom. Yet at home, I regularly hear that school is “boring,” and enthusiasm for going is often hard to find.

Of course, the word boring tells us very little on its own. A child may call something boring because it is too easy, but just as easily because it feels difficult, unpleasant, pointless, or stressful. Still, I find the difference between what school sees and what a child shows at home interesting. I recognize it from my own school years too. Looking back, my strategy was to make myself as easy to overlook as possible. I stayed in the background, did what was expected, and gave teachers very little reason to look more closely. I was quite successful at it. And that leaves me with an important question: how could a teacher have known what I was cognitively capable of if I rarely showed it? That is exactly where underachievement becomes complicated.

Underachievement is not the same as poor grades

Underachievement is generally described as a discrepancy between what a student appears capable of achieving and what is ultimately reflected in their academic performance. But even that definition makes the issue sound simpler than it really is. Research shows that gifted underachievement does not have one single cause. Motivation, skills for managing one’s own learning, family, peers, social-emotional factors, and characteristics of the learning environment can all play a role and interact with one another.¹

Students themselves describe this complexity too. In a recent study of 253 high-ability middle and high school students, students identified factors such as a mismatch with the educational environment, low motivation, missing study skills, pressure, challenges at home, and competing commitments as possible contributors to underachievement.² That makes the question “Why doesn’t this student just do what we know they can do?” far too simple. A more useful question may be:

What is happening here that keeps us from seeing what this student can do, or keeps their abilities from developing further?

Sometimes underachievement is clearly visible in low or declining grades. But not always. A student who earns A’s with very little effort may look highly successful by conventional measures. At the same time, they may go for months without needing to learn anything genuinely new in order to earn those grades. The grades are good. But how much learning is actually happening?

The student who seems to be doing just fine

I am especially interested in the quiet student who adapts well. A child can learn what is expected in a classroom. Participate in instruction. Stop mentioning that they already know something. Complete work that requires very little effort. Keep knowledge that goes far beyond the curriculum largely out of sight. That does not have to be a conscious strategy.

Identifying advanced ability in very young children is challenging in its own right. A 2025 Dutch study of children ages 3 to 5 found that recognizing giftedness in childcare and kindergarten settings was far from straightforward. Childcare professionals used specific identification protocols and tools much less often than kindergarten teachers did. The researchers also emphasized the importance of information from parents, who see their children across different situations and over a much longer period of time.³

A practitioner publication from the same research project also notes that young children with advanced development may adapt to their age peers, which can make that developmental lead less visible.⁴ That is a useful possibility to keep in mind, but I would not treat it as a hard rule. We do not know that every gifted child automatically adapts, or does so within a particular period of time. What we do know is that early identification is difficult and that a child’s abilities can be underestimated by professionals.

In one longitudinal study, 14 children who had already been identified as potentially gifted before entering school were followed during their early school years. More than half were underestimated by at least one teacher.⁵ That makes one response especially important:

“We don’t see it at school” is valuable information, but it is not a final conclusion.

What parents see at home is part of the picture

There is another part of this that I recognize from my own children. We suspected giftedness fairly early, but we missed signs ourselves too. When you see your child every day, you have very little basis for comparison. An unusually large vocabulary, unexpected questions, or certain interests can simply feel normal within your own family. At the same time, we trusted that professionals at school would tell us if they noticed something unusual. That never happened.

Looking back, that mainly shows how easily information can become fragmented. Parents know their child extremely well, but may not know which behaviors or abilities are unusual compared with same-age peers. A teacher has much more opportunity for comparison, but sees that child within one particular setting: the classroom, the curriculum being taught, and the expectations that come with it. If a student adapts well, earns good grades, and causes few problems, there may be very little reason for a teacher to look further.

That is exactly why the two perspectives need to come together. At home, a child may ask unusually complex questions, teach themselves new things, or hold conversations at a level that is rarely visible at school. That does not mean home shows the “right” child and school shows the “wrong” one. It means that different environments can reveal different information.

With young children, parent observations may be particularly valuable. In the Dutch early-identification study, parents were involved in nearly all of the identification processes. The researchers also describe cases in which parents had noticed characteristics before their child started kindergarten, sometimes without realizing at the time that those characteristics could be related to advanced development.³ So when home and school seem to be seeing two different children, the question does not have to be which picture is correct. A more interesting question is: How are different environments revealing different things? That is not a contradiction that needs to be resolved first. It is information worth investigating.

A “model student” may be especially easy to miss

A child who disrupts class because the work is too easy gets attention. So does a child who refuses assignments. A student whose grades suddenly drop usually does too. But a student who adapts to the level being offered, continues to earn good grades, and asks very little of the teacher gives us far less reason to look more closely. We see a similar problem in research on gifted identification. Identification systems that require a parent or teacher nomination before further assessment can miss a substantial proportion of students with high cognitive ability.⁶ The issue is therefore broader than underachievement alone.

If we only investigate students who display conspicuous behavior or exceptional achievement, some students will remain invisible. That makes identification difficult, because there is no behavioral checklist that will reliably find all of these children. Perhaps we need to spend less time looking for the behavior of a gifted child and more time investigating what an individual student already knows, understands, and is capable of learning.

“School is boring” is a starting point, not an explanation

The child’s perspective matters here too. But we need to ask follow-up questions. If a child says school is boring, we still know almost nothing. Do they mean: I already know this? Or: I don’t understand why I have to do this? Or: I’m not interested in this topic? Or perhaps: I find this difficult and I don’t know how to get started? Maybe they mean: I have to listen to a lot of instruction I don’t actually need. Or perhaps the issue has nothing to do with the level of the curriculum at all. That is why I find a different question much more useful than “Do you like school?”

When was the last time you learned something at school that you genuinely didn’t know or couldn’t do before?

You can also ask when a child really has to think, which explanations they actually need and which they do not, or what happens when something does not come easily the first time. The goal is not to ask children to diagnose their own educational needs. It is to gather information that grades and quiet classroom behavior cannot show us.

How do you make hidden prior knowledge visible?

This is where pre-assessment becomes important. If a child does not constantly tell you that they already know the material, and their classroom behavior gives you little indication of where their upper limit lies, sometimes you have to actively investigate what they have already mastered. That is exactly what happens in curriculum compacting. First, you identify the learning goals. Then, before instruction begins, you determine which of those goals the student has already mastered. Only then do you decide which instruction and practice they still need and where space can be created for different kinds of challenge.⁷

A formal pretest can help, but it is not always necessary. Especially with younger children, previous work, a conversation, a task, or another form of performance assessment may also provide useful evidence of mastery.⁷ The important point is not to look only at a child’s overall level. A student may have fully mastered some learning goals while still needing instruction in others. Pre-assessment does not mean: prove that you’re gifted. It means: let’s first find out where your learning actually needs to begin.

I think that distinction matters. Because when we only give students what their age or grade level says should come next, what we mainly learn is how they function within that curriculum. Not necessarily what they are capable of beyond it.

That does not mean we should worry about every student who earns high grades. Nor does every gifted child need more or harder work all the time. But good grades should be considered alongside other information. If a child shows a great deal of resistance to school at home, says they rarely learn anything new, demonstrates mastery of much of the curriculum before instruction begins, or shows a striking difference between what is visible at home and at school, that deserves further investigation. Otherwise, grades can unintentionally end the conversation: “But they’re doing fine, aren’t they?” A more useful question may be:

Is this student doing well within what we are offering, or are we offering an education in which this student can actually learn and grow?

Those are not the same thing.

When something finally becomes difficult

There is another side to spending a long time without being sufficiently challenged. Some high-ability students can earn strong grades for years without needing to plan much, practice, persist, or change strategies. That does not mean gifted children as a group have weak executive function skills. But an individual student may have had fewer opportunities to practice planning, asking for help, analyzing mistakes, and persisting in situations that genuinely require effort.

When challenging material finally does appear, that can come as a surprise. Not because the child is incapable of learning. But perhaps because they have had very little experience with not knowing right away. That is why appropriate challenge is about much more than keeping a student busy. Good teaching gives students opportunities to learn something genuinely new, put in effort, adjust their approach, and eventually move forward.

First, understand where the mismatch is

That is also why I am cautious about quick fixes for underachievement. An unmotivated student does not automatically need a motivation program. A student who does not finish their work does not automatically need help with planning. And a child who says school is boring does not automatically need a stack of harder assignments. First, we need to understand where the mismatch lies.

What has the student already mastered? Where is instruction still needed? Is the pace appropriate? Is the enrichment actually meaningful? Does the student have enough autonomy and enough support? Is something happening within the peer group? How does the child experience school? And are parents seeing something at home that is barely visible in the classroom? Only then can you make a thoughtful decision about curriculum compacting, enrichment, acceleration, different support, or an entirely different kind of intervention.

And do not be afraid to step outside the usual path: if you later discover that a student does have a gap in a particular area, you can always return to that specific learning goal. An educational adjustment is ultimately a hypothesis: we think this may be a better fit. Then you watch what happens to the student’s learning and well-being and adjust when needed.

From “we don’t see it” to investigating together

That shift can be difficult in conversations between parents and schools. Parents see one thing. School sees something else. And before long, the conversation can become a debate about which picture is the correct one.

I think a different stance is much more useful: Maybe both are true. Perhaps a child shows something at home that has not yet become visible in the classroom. Perhaps school sees skills or difficulties that are not visible at home. Perhaps further investigation shows that the assumed advanced development is smaller than expected. Or perhaps it is greater. But you will not know until you look.

That is why I created the practical decision guide A gifted child at school. Now what? and its companion conversation sheet within The Curious Mind Expedition. They are not designed to determine whether a child is gifted, but to help parents and educators bring their observations together and systematically investigate where the educational fit is working and where it is not. The guide looks at what a child already knows, level and pace, curriculum compacting, enrichment and acceleration, support, autonomy, the learning environment, and well-being. It then helps you decide what to try, who will do what, and when you will review the plan.

Because perhaps the most important shift in thinking about underachievement is this: do not wait until a child shows enough problems before taking a possible mismatch seriously. A quiet student can underachieve. A child with good grades can still be insufficiently challenged. A student who behaves like a model student may know far more than is visible. And when a parent sees something different from what school sees, that is not an inconvenient contradiction. It may be an important piece of information.

So the question is not only: How is this student doing? More importantly: Are we actually giving ourselves the chance to see what this student is capable of learning?

References

¹ Raoof, K., Shokri, O., Fathabadi, J., & Panaghi, L. (2024). Unpacking the underachievement of gifted students: A systematic review of internal and external factors. Heliyon, 10(17), e36908.

² Desmet, O. A., & Pereira, N. (2026). High-Ability Students’ Perceptions of Underachievement. Gifted Child Quarterly, 70(3), 424–436. Online gepubliceerd in 2025.

³ Bijl, R. A., Smeets, K., & Bakx, A. W. E. A. (2025). Identification of Young Gifted Children in Childcare and Kindergarten: A Mixed Methods Study. Roeper Review, 47(3), 174–188.

⁴ Bijl, R., Smeets, K., & Bakx, A. (2025). Signaleren van een ontwikkelingsvoorsprong in de kinderopvang: hoe eerder, hoe beter? [Identifying advanced development in childcare: The earlier, the better?] Gifted@248, 8–12. [In Dutch.]

⁵ Hodge, K. A., & Kemp, C. R. (2006). Recognition of Giftedness in the Early Years of School: Perspectives of Teachers, Parents, and Children. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 30(2).

⁶ McBee, M. T., Peters, S. J., & Miller, E. M. (2016). The Impact of the Nomination Stage on Gifted Program Identification: A Comprehensive Psychometric Analysis. Gifted Child Quarterly, 60(4), 258–278.

⁷ Reis, S. M., & Renzulli, J. S. Curriculum Compacting: A Systematic Procedure for Modifying the Curriculum for Above Average Ability Students. Renzulli Center for Creativity, Gifted Education, and Talent Development, University of Connecticut.