Gifted Education Essay

In 2015, I wrote about my personal philosophy of the gifted learner. I stated in my paper that, “Giftedness is not a one, set definition. The definition of gifted must encompass intellect, ability, creative talent as well as emotional awareness. It cannot be micro-managed and be a “one size fits all” definition” (Dauber, 2015). People, who are gifted, need differentiation and opportunity to express, demonstrate and show their giftedness. Educators must be able to provide opportunities for the gifted learner to express his/her abilities and/or talents. Gifted students learn differently and require special educational experiences in order to grow academically and achieve their highest potential. Therefore, the education field must be able to understand not only the cognitive side of a gifted learner but the affective or social/emotional aspects too.

Education was built, along with many other things, to the average standard. It was designed with the average student in mind, never really adapted towards those who grasps concepts quickly, accelerate at rapid rates beyond their peers. As gifted, or exceptionally intelligence children make up around 6 to 10 percent of the students within America, roughly 3 to 5 million students (“Gifted Education in the U.S”). But as America is behind in the general education, it is bounds behind in gifted education. Teachers aren’t equipped to challenge the gifted students, or simply have no time to spend developing and nurturing the child’s talents. Schools don’t have programs to help the children develop at their quicken pace, and programs in place aren’t

One of the difficulties in identifying the needs of low-income students is the profound cultural barriers which exist that prevent their strengths and deficits from being identified. Children from low-income homes frequently have poorer vocabularies and a weaker basis of the type of knowledge that is frequently considered 'intelligence' on most forms of assessment. A low-income child's IQ may be high, even though he lacks a framework of accepted middle-class knowledge. "In January 2003, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on the seeming overrepresentation of minorities in special education and underrepresentation of those students in gifted education. The NRC reported that, nationwide, 7.47 percent of all white students and 9.9 percent of Asian students are placed in gifted programs. Meanwhile, 3.04 percent of African-American students, 3.57 percent of Hispanic students, and 4.86 percent of American Indian students are classified as gifted" (GT-minority identification, 2003, ERIC Clearinghouse). The discrepancy, the NAS believed, could not be solely explained by talent alone but was at least partially rooted in the methods of identifying students labeled as gifted. Biases in standardized and other tests identifying student strengths, combined with prejudices, however unintentional, amongst educators and administrators lead to under-identification of the gifted

Middle school is a period of transition for adolescents. Students are no longer the children were once were in elementary school; they are beginning to mature into the adults they will need to become. Gifted learners at the middle-school level face the same developmental and tasks tasks and challenges that their peers do. Yet, gifted learners also possess traits that are different from their peers, which often make them misunderstood or ignored. The need for teachers to identify these students and differentiate instruction in a way that addresses the needs of the gifted students in the classroom is becoming more crucial than ever.

A Gifted and talented (G/T) student” is “one who . . . exhibits high performance capability in an intellectual, creative, or artistic area, possesses an unusual capacity for leadership, or excels in a specific academic field” (Aldine ISD Board Policy Manual, 2014). The Texas Education Agency (TEA) provides a state plan, which outlines the standards for Texas schools to be in compliance. It also offers the educational opportunities these students should receive. In fact, there are performance measures for five aspects of G/T programs including student assessment, service design, curriculum and instruction, professional development, and family and community involvement. The plan assists districts in delivering these comprehensive services to

Mala Morrow is a gifted student. She was identified as being gifted after she scored in the 98 percentile on the Test of Cognitive Skills (TCS). She maintained an A average while she was enrolled in elementary school, now as a middle schooler she has a cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.9. Mala’s ethnicity is Indian. She is actively learning, English, German, and she is fluent in two different Arabic dialects. These attributes clearly define that Mala is properly labeled as a gifted and talented student.

You might think twice before sending a tennis coach to baseball’s spring training season; although there would be overlap in general kinesthetic and sports psychology knowledge, the nuances of the two sports are very different and require disparate sets of coaching skills. Just as a baseball team needs a coach who understands baseball, gifted students need guidance from well-trained, challenging teachers who understand their educational needs. Teacher training requirements for working with gifted students are determined at the state and local levels. Although gifted and talented students are in every school and classroom, few districts require that all classroom teachers receive training to address the educational needs of advanced learners.

I observed Julie Tolbert’s gifted third, fourth, and fifth grade classes. The kids in each class were mainly girls but only by a few numbers. Each child had a different learning style, and while they are all in a gifted class some were slower than others with each subject. A child that did really well in the science part of the day might struggle more in the social studies part of the day. Julie would accommodate each learning style to the best of her ability seeing as her ratio was normally

A fifth grader may come in at a “second-grade level” and graduate at a “fourth-grade level,” which is a tremendous achievement on the part of the educators; however, because standardized testing fails to account for such circumstances, the entire year would be seen as a failure from the perspective of the state (Berger). To put it crudely, “poor schools can’t win at standardized testing” because students in areas of poverty start school academically behind and are unable to catch up as there is the lack of resources and funding (Broussard). On the other extreme, gifted students are also hurt by attempts to standardize education, for instance, with the No Child Left Behind Act, an act that many say has “failed our adolescents” (Steinberg). Teachers say that the legislation has resulted in a “race to the middle” that means “talented students have their potential squandered” as schools “[don’t] foster growth” (Weller). In effect, standardization attempts to remove individuality from learning and ignores that students have different capacities for learning, that some students may need more help while others need to be challenged above their grade level - instead it averages it all out to a “standard” that harms both

freedom to explore and develop ideas. Students labelled as ‘gifted’ should not repeat what they have learned but stimulated to develop new ideas, through investigating, generalising and making connections. (Stepanek, 1999). Students who are not stretched and challenged enough will lose the interest and motivation and though will not make the expected progress. One reason could be due to lack of subject knowledge of the teachers. If teachers do not have knowledge of the subject themselves how are they going to be able to stretch and challenge their learners?

The topic of gifted and talented education is one that has always sparked debates among parents and teachers, and recent movements towards totally integrating classrooms have added to this debate. For many years now, "average" children, gifted and

Each year, children are failing in school. As the years progress, the number of children failing keep rising. In "Closing the Achievement Gap", Kati Haycock, the Director of the Education Trust at the American Association for Higher Education, states " Between 1970 and 1988, the achievement gap between African American and white students was cut in half, and the gap separating Latinos and whites declined by one-third. That progress came to a halt around 1988, however, and since that time, the gaps have widened" (6). As a result, people are doing studies and have come up with several theories that exist on how to address the achievement gap. These ideas have been categorized below to establish the issue to show causes

In elementary schools around the world, a debate occurs on whether inclusion, or placing a student with special needs into a mainstream class, positively affects both the disabled and gifted students in the room. Pull-out programs, in which students are removed from a heterogeneous classroom and given focused attention and instruction, could result in the solution to this problem because this gives them the opportunity to work with students at the same academic level as them. According to Naomi Fernandez, a professor at Lone Star College in Texas, “...some of the benefits [of pull-out programs] included individualized or small group attention to students with learning disabilities, thus increasing academic success. Some of the drawbacks included logistics issues with coordination and planning, and social issues with stigmatization” (33). Fernandez noted the pros and cons of pull-out programs in elementary schools by explaining how they can impact a student’s social and academic success. Pull-out programs provide academic benefits for students; yet laning precludes emotional, social, and mental growth in both gifted and disabled students.

Toni Noble’s 2004 study asks the implied question of: How can the Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy benefit children with academic weakness? The rationale for study was curriculum differentiation, for special education and gifted education within the regular classroom. The study was based on sixteen K-6 teachers in two single stream elementary schools. The two schools studied were similar in population but different in “ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic status.” and were in the same school district. (Nobel 2004, pg. 195). First school encompassed 75% families with English as a Second Language; with 59% in trade or unskilled professions and 39% unemployed. The second school encompassed 46% families with English as a Second Language and parents were predominately employed in professional occupations. The relevance of the study was to determine if Multiple Intelligences (MI) improved student awareness of their own “spatial visual, musical, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist intelligence” (pg. 193-194). In conjunction with the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (RBT) of educational objectives; from “simple remembering to higher order critical and creative thinking” (pg. 194). The revised levels from simple to complex thinking are Remember. Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create” Anderson, Anderson & Krathwohl, (as cited in Nobel, 2004, pg. 194). In this study the tool teachers used was a “two-dimensional

With every challenge there is a solution. Many schools do not have the funds to support a gifted and talented program. Reasons such as this is why teachers and schools have come up with ways to provide a appropriate education to gifted students so that they can reach their full potential. One solution is Acceleration. Since curriculum is mastered much faster then those of their peers, acceleration can move gifted student through the curriculum at a much faster rate. Smith discusses various forms of acceleration that can be applied. A few are grade skipping, curriculum compacting, and advanced placement (2014). Grade skipping is a popular decision while students are in elementary school. Long-term benefits are not only for the student, but for society also. It reduces the amount of time the student spends in school, which means they spend more time in the field, conducting research and making discoveries (As cited in Smith 2014). Advanced placement courses are acceleration courses that are offered to high school students to achieve college credits. Although advanced placement is not made for gifted learner, it provides the option for gifted students to study topics more in depth and