Gifted Education In America

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.

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

gifted students within those states, and are not consistent across the United States. “Seven states

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

Van Tassel-Baska, J. (2000). Theory and research on curriculum development for the gifted. In K.A. Heller, F.J. Monks, R. J. Sternberg & R.F. Subotnik (Eds.). International handbook of giftedness and talent (2nd ed., pp. 365–386). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

I am a proponent of ability grouping. I believe that the best way to make progress is taking students and breaking them up into leveled sections so that they can achieve to their highest potential. To me, this is the only thing that truly makes sense. In an article from Newsweek.com entitled America Hates it's Gifted Kids (2014), by Chris Weller, while No Child Left Behind from 2001 did help to improve the scores of underachieving students across the nation, by some degree, we did terrible things for our gifted students. Many of these were left to fend for themselves. Gifted programs were often unfunded in order to handle the needs being created for underachieving students. When our gifted children may someday become our inventors, engineers, and doctors of the future, why on earth is their education and growth not as important as a student with special needs, or anyone else? We build individualized education plans for students who struggle, those with needs, yet we ignore other special abilities. Why can't we build a plan for them as well? Why don't we build a plan for each student, so that instead of a one-size-fits-all education, we provide a track for all students to run on based on their strengths and weaknesses. In this manner, all can continue to grow. There is nothing that says a student who begins in one group cannot move up. There is nothing that says a student who struggles in math couldn't be a high achieving reader. In the Education Week (2004) article on tracking, the major concern against ability grouping has to do with labels. That the majority of students in low level ability groups are poor and minority, and that ability grouping sets a stigma on that particular population. Yet that is where they achieve! By giving specialized instruction at each individual level, all have a chance to grow, instead of lagging further behind, stagnating, or creating a greater challenge when their unique needs aren't met, and further

2 & 3. Use the most current versions of standardized tests that are going to be used to make a decision about admission into a gifted program and that norms are up-to-date and a good representation of

Many educators feel that teachers aren’t trained to teach gifted students. Teaching accountability has teachers focus more on

The students within Northern Secondary School’s 2014-2015 Gifted Program graduating class slid into AP and gifted classes like they were made for them. Since the beginning of their middle school careers, these gifted high school students have been spoonfed a thought-provoking and comprehensive education. At Wong’s public gifted elementary school, Cummer Valley, the faced-paced and in-depth curriculum not only stimulated his intellectual capacity and unlocked his potential, but “compelled him to achieve higher academic standards and established a strong foundation to build upon for high school.” Wong claims that he entered Earl Haig, a non-gifted public high school, with a knowledge base practically a grade higher than the majority of his subordinate

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

Motivating gifted students can present a challenge for any teacher. Many children are coming to school with very little enthusiasm to learn, especially the gifted child. Although

Validity is the assessment of the test’s informational construct, content, and criterion (Jarosewich, Pfeiffer, & Morris, 2002). Despite the fact that GATES does not reference any giftedness theory or theory of support, content validity is confirmed for GATES since the test was developed based on literature reviews, critiques of existing rating scales, and academic and test construction experts of the field (Jarosewich, Pfeiffer, & Morris, 2002, p. 330). A combination between federal guidelines on giftedness and a confirmatory item analysis is the basis of GATES creation.

Adams County public school system’s current program doesn’t seem to recognize any minority or poor students who could be considered gifted. Educators in this district and committee members seem to lack any motivation to include diverse learners in their program. The fact that Adams County only recognized three out of four hundred thirty-eight over a five-year span is appalling. I feel Adams County need some major changes to extend their idea of giftedness. It needs to start with intensive and in-depth teacher training along with community outreach and awareness programs to help educate parents about giftedness. For instance, parent could learn ways to better support their children and help identify their child’s areas of giftedness.

Because of school-wide issue such as, funding, space, and staff availability, this may be the maximum amount of time that they can physically provide for pullout enrichment for gifted students. This is common, and in these cases, it is important to “ensure that the curricular and instructional experiences within the general education classroom are appropriate for the advanced needs of gifted students” (Brighton and Wiley, 2013, p.192). We know from the Lackland description, that their students are not receiving these educational opportunities in their general education classrooms because many of the students are displaying a lack of

In this case, some people refute that gifted students are practically children with adult minds who are capable of diving into the real-world while they have merely begun to test the waters. Others counter with the belief that pushing gifted youth to tackle subjects above the average student of their grade is socially damaging. However, K. Elijah (2011) explains that gifted students who are not being challenged can develop an extreme boredom in school which can lead to disruptive behaviors that will evolve into dropping out of school. In the same article, gifted students are credited with learning quicker, more deeply, and tend to practice material for memorization less (Elijah, 2011). Also, “Acceleration of Gifted Students” (2003) further clarifies that when gifted students are properly assisted in developing an educational program, they report to be satisfied emotionally and academically. Students also tended to have more self-confidence, and no negative effects of acceleration were reported in a survey of non-gifted and gifted students (“Acceleration,” 2003). Assisting gifted students is imperative whether it be through homogeneous grouping, heterogeneous grouping, and/or acceleration in order to provide proper instruction that will benefit these