Gifted students
While many students struggle to reach grade-level proficiency, others master concepts quickly and need additional challenge. Sometimes these advanced students become bored or disruptive when classroom challenge is missing.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, gifted students are those who "give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities." To help teachers provide the advanced challenge needed by gifted learners, the California Department of Education (CDE) established the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program, authorized by California Education Code (EC) sections 52200 through 52212 (Outside Source). According to the California Department of Education Web site, the GATE program:
. . . provides funding for local educational agencies (LEAs) to develop unique education opportunities for high-achieving and underachieving pupils in California public elementary and secondary schools who have been identified as gifted and talented. Special efforts are made to ensure that pupils from economically disadvantaged and varying cultural backgrounds are provided with full participation in these unique opportunities.
GATE program options include special day classes, part-time groupings, and cluster groupings. According to law, GATE curricular components must:
. . . be planned and organized as integrated differentiated learning experiences within the regular school day and may be augmented or supplemented with other differentiated activities related to the core curriculum, including independent study, acceleration, postsecondary education, and enrichment. For all programs for gifted and talented pupils, including those programs for pupils with high creative capability and talents in the performing and visual arts, each participating LEA shall concentrate part of its curriculum on providing GATE pupils with an academic component and, where appropriate, with instruction in basic skills.
Although many schools lack funding for GATE programs, partnerships with local colleges or high schools might help in providing enrichment for advanced learners. For example, at Central Middle School in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, students can take courses to prepare them for advanced placement work at the high school level. Students who successfully complete the classes earn high school credits.1
GATE programs are operated in approximately 800 districts located in all 58 counties. There are over 480,000 public school students identified as gifted and talented in the state—representing roughly 8 percent of California's schoolchildren.
Related Links
- A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students (Outside Source), by Nicholas Colangelo, Susan G. Assouline, and Miraca U. M. Gross, The Templeton National Report on Acceleration.
- Gifted and Talented Education Program Resource Guide, (DOC; 431KB; 56pp.), California Department of Education.
- Pre-K-Grade 12 Gifted Programming Standards (Outside Source), National Association for Gifted Children.
- Laws and Regulations, California Department of Education.
- NAGC Position Statement: Meeting the Needs of High Ability and High Potential Learners in the Middle Grades (Outside Source), National Middle School Association and the National Association For Gifted Children.
- National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) (Outside Source)
- National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (Outside Source) University of Connecticut.
- Recommended Standards for
Programs for
Gifted and Talented Students (DOC; 97KB; 9pp.), California State Board of Education.
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Footnote
1Sarah Moran, “Advanced Middle-School Students Get a Challenge,” Star Tribune, February 6, 2007.
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