No Child Left Behind Act Of 2001 ( Nclb ) And It Mandates

This paper will address the special needs involved with teaching the gifted. First it will identify exactly who is considered gifted and the process of evaluating and creating a plan to meet these children’s educational needs. Then it will address the methods that need to be put in place to teach gifted children in the classroom. Some of these things include dealing with underachieving gifted students and the area of twice exceptional students. It will cover the problem with properly accessing children of all ethnic backgrounds and how alternate methods of testing should be employed. It will deal with cultural acceptance of girls in gifted programs. It will also consider developing stem programs and enlisting corporate support for such programs to support the gifted child.

[Students who are gifted] give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic or leadership capacity, or in specific academic field, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities. ( No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 [NCLB], 2002, p. 526)

The NAGC’s standards state that teachers “must understand the characteristics and needs of the population for whom they are planning curriculum, instruction, assessment, programs, and services” (Brighton and Wiley, 2013, p. 194). Lackland is not meeting this criterion because their pullout teachers are not endorsed in gifted education and their general education teachers are unable to plan instruction that meets the needs of their gifted learners in the regular classroom setting.

There are many myths surrounding the education of gifted students. According to Cross (2002), some of these myths include: gifted students should spend time with their age peers, gifted students should be well rounded, giftedness is a natural occurrence, professionals who work with gifted students understand the their social and emotional needs, adults truly understand what it is like to be gifted in today’s society, messages about being too smart, and the age old statement that all students are gifted. While these myths are prevalent in education, they are myths and we need to be enlightened and dispel these myths.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, the 2001 update of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Klein, 2015), was put into place to ensure that all students, regardless of disability label, would meet state mandated academic goals by the 2013-2014 school year. The law was a collaborative effort between both political parties on Capitol Hill, as well as key stakeholders in the civil rights and business groups. The aim of NCLB was to “advance American competitiveness and close the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their more advantaged peers” (Klein, 2015). NCLB required that each student population, which was to include each defined subgroup, must meet a measurable objective which would be set forth by the state.

The United States Congress has slightly altered the definition of giftedness presented in 1972, mainly to remedy the problem that talent was being too narrowly defined, but even in recent revisions the first five characteristics listed in the Marland Report remain almost exactly the same, the only one that has been removed is the sixth: psychomotor ability. This last characteristic was removed from the list because officials felt that school athletic programs could meet students’ needs in that specific area and that gifted and talented programs should be instituted to help develop skills and capabilities which are not being satisfactorily provided by a school’s standard curriculum and programs (Eby and Smutny, 1990, p. 5). Defining these five or six areas as the guidelines for evaluating talent is not problematic. What is troublesome is that most gifted and talent program admissions are based on a high stakes type of IQ test, rather than any combination of the characteristics decided by US officials to define talent (Shore, Cornell, Robinson, and Ward, 1991, p. 42).

Callahan et al (2012). indicate that one of the major issues with current gifted education is the differing standards that are used to identify students for these gifted programs. They go onto mention what with this wide discrepancy within the identification process, leads to multiple differing understandings of what giftedness means Callahan et al, and thus many students going unrecognized as gifted.

This challenge has proven to be easier said than done, and its solution varies from state to state. For the purpose of this paper, the state of Delaware’s method will suffice. Delaware uses a combination of standardized assessments and teacher nominations in order to suss these children out (Hansen 9). While the state does not promote one method over the other, the Legislative Task Force For Gifted and Talented Education does claim that a physical, tangible measure of intelligence, such as a standardardized assessment score, may be a more concrete identifier (Hansen 9). However, as any high schooler who didn’t score as highly as they had hoped on the SAT can attest to, standardized tests can’t measure everything, and this is why administrators must take additional information into account, such as class performance and recommendations, to determine who is gifted and who is

To thrive academically, students need a curriculum tailored to their learning style, pace, and level. NCLB has set standards where the focus is on closing the achievement gap, the differences exhibited in student achievement according to race and economic condition (Lagana-Riordan & Aguilar, 2009). This focus leaves students who learn at an accelerated rate at a disadvantage. Under NCLB the focus is so set on low achieving students that high achieving students do not get the educational challenges they need to thrive. An article in Voices from the Middle suggests that gifted children are getting left behind in the new system - “NCLB Act focuses mainly on disadvantaged children.” Because the law requires that all children be proficient in math and reading by the 2013-2014 school year, the attention is given to students who are not competent in reading and math. This is especially difficult at the adolescent level where students require reinforcement to continue reading when there are so many other distractions.

There is not a single curriculum for the gifted. There is no one size fits all approach to gifted education. Kaplan (2009), teacher and administer of gifted programs, believes “Although it could be stated that there is no single curriculum for the gifted, there is sufficient evidence to acknowledge that there is a single set of principles or elements that represent an appropriate differentiated curriculum for gifted students” Specifically gifted students classrooms need to differentiate because even among that level of learning there are differences in student ability.

What are some of the barriers to the development of gifted education? Change is difficult for most people to accept, that is true in all aspects of life, however, the biggest barrier to increasing the educational opportunities of gifted individuals was/is the reluctance and an unwillingness to change. Furthermore, change was not the only obstacle. As noted by Lord (2010) resistance to performance based assessments in order to identify a student as being gifted met with much opposition at the time that the idea was proposed, however, most of the objections to performance based assessments have now been

In conclusion, the research team suggests that studies be carried out at other universities on gifted underachievers to help determine what can be done to help these students become more successful. Then, a study should taken of High school students to see how they feel about their academic success thus far and also how they feel about the rigors of classes, their current studying skills, engagement to tasks, and time

In recent years, gifted education programs have received extensive attention from a multitude of groups, in many cases arousing passionate arguments about their effectiveness, or even their fundamentality. Angry parents complain about budget cuts from these programs, while others are furious that their child was not accepted into a gifted program. Teachers are also divided on this issue. Some teachers believe gifted programs are very important for engaging high-achieving students, while others believe they hold back students who are not accepted. Still others have too little knowledge of the issue to create an informed opinion, even though it directly relates to their work. Many do not know how to identify gifted students so they can recommend

The question was posed, How has the NCLB legislative impact made a difference in education (e.g. resources, attention, time, faculty, district focus, etc.) of your gifted population of students? According to responses from multiple teachers, coordinators of gifted and talented programs, administrators, and parents these conclusions were drawn (University of Iowa listserv 2008).

There are several negative consequences involved when gifted students are not properly identified or treated. The student will learn at too slow a pace in the regular classroom, resulting in boredom and frustration. Some students who are not identified may even become completely disinterested and drop out. Eventually, those students who remain in school at this slow pace will begin to realize that they can succeed without putting forth much effort. As a result, the students will develop poor study habits and a smaller attention span. By the time this student enters college, he/she does much poorly than the average student because he/she never learned how to properly study (Southern & Jones, 1991).